Rating (1 to 10) : 5
Summary: It’s a story about the rivalry between adults in the comic book world acting like kids.
DJ Qualls, who plays the central character in the movie (Archie), is a geeky participant in the comic book world, where grown men collect, peruse, and read comic books because they never grew out of childhood and its fantasies. His friend Raymond McGillicuddy (Donal Logue, Dex in “The Tao of Steve”) is an owner of a comic book shop in town. His business rivals are a couple Norman and Judy Link (Michael Rappaport, Dick Ritchie in “True Romance”, Natasha Lyonne, Jessica in “American Pie”) who run a store that sells comic books, along with cards and computer games. To Raymond, they are really poseurs who are in the comic book business solely for the money and not for the love of the hobby.
The rivalry would have been just that until they both find out that an elderly retired woman in their town, Mrs. Cresswell (Eileen Brennan, Capt. Lewis in “Private Benjamin”), has a large collection of classic comic books that she inherited from her dead son and are worth thousands of dollars. Both Raymond and the Links want her son’s comics because they would garner them monetary rewards. But Raymond also wants the fame associated with possessing these rare comic books.
The story then shows both the Links and Raymond influencing, persuading, cajoling, inducing, and inveigling Mrs. Cresswell to sell the comic books to them rather than to their competitor. Both sides lobby hard by giving gifts, doing errands, and trying to ingratiate themselves to her. The competition heats up though when Raymond goes overboard and hires a local thug Carter (Cary Elwes, Westly in “The Princess Bride”) to break into Mrs. Cresswell’s house and steal the comics. Unfortunately, this results in a predictable but moralistic ending. I wondered if the moral was that adults who act as petty as children, even with kids’ stuff like comics, end up suffering or if it was that we can’t expect adults trapped in childhood with their comics to behave maturely. Maybe I’m overanalyzing this movie since it is not that deep.
DJ Qualls doesn’t play his character Archie as nerdy and socially inept as Kyle in “Road Trip”; unfortunately, it would have been better for the movie if he did. Qualls probably thought his performance in this movie would help him break out of his typecast role but in doing so, it detracted from the movie.
Why you should or should not see this movie:
This movie is OK, nothing special. I honestly can’t think of any reason to persuade or dissuade anyone from watching this movie. A perfect neutral score?
Copyright by the Doomster 2004