Dramedy, the mixture of drama and comedy, takes serious subject matter and has yielded some fantastic movies. Bonnie and Clyde took robbery and murder and made it exciting while still keeping its inevitably tragic ending. Little Miss Sunshine made audiences laugh at family dysfunction while still maintaining the seriousness of their troubled relationships. Secretary subverted the romantic comedy with masochism and self-mutilation. Last Day of Summer tried to create a dramedy out of disturbed youth and mass killings. For me, the film was not only a complete failure; their disrespectful treatment of the subject matter left a bad taste in my mouth.
Last Day of Summer follows Joe (DJ Qualls), a part-time janitor at a local fast food joint. After being harassed and humiliated by his boss Mr. Crolick (William Sadler) and ignored by everyone else, Joe has decided to kill Mr. Crolick and everyone else he can before he is gunned down by the police. When the time comes, however, he loses his nerve and can’t go through with it. Instead, he takes Stefanie (Nikki Reed) hostage when she rejects his advances, and he takes her to his hotel room with no idea what he will do with her. As the day goes on, Joe strikes up conversation with Stefanie and starts slowly loosening her restraints.
From what I can tell, the filmmakers intended for the audience to sympathize with Joe and his plight. We are meant to look at Joe and think that if we were treated that way, we might snap too. I have two major problems here. First, they never give Joe much depth as a character. He is bumbling and ridiculous for most of the movie. The only way they could have made him sillier is if they used the Benny Hill Theme for the soundtrack. I pitied Joe, and pity is miles away from empathizing or relating with him.
Second, Joe’s goal throughout the movie is to commit mass murder and live on in infamy. He thinks that proving his worth means killing unarmed people. I cannot get behind his goal or his reasoning behind it. His boss Mr. Crolick might be a bad boss and a hurtful human being, but he does not deserve to be gunned down. The film never addresses that in that restaurant there are men, women, and children who have nothing to do with Joe’s low self-esteem. Instead, they focus in on the boss and try to play up his fear for laughs. Joe’s feeling of inadequacy does not give him the right to commit mass murder, and the filmmaker’s attempts to make Joe likable only irritated me further.
I could go into all the reasons why I don’t like this film solely on its cinematic value. The visuals are drab, there are no relatable characters, and the movie was way too long. Unfortunately, my complaints go beyond its failures as a film. Last Day of Summer was insulting to me as a woman and as someone who went through middle school and high school post-Columbine. I will address the feminist issue first. The filmmakers try to build a possible romance between Joe and Stefanie. In one scene, Joe breaks his hand and Stefanie has a chance to escape but chooses to stay and bandage his hand. Before this scene, Joe had kidnapped her at gunpoint, tied her up, left her in the bathtub, and knocked her unconscious when she tried to escape. This is not an unlikely romance; this is an abusive captor/captive relationship. Joe has proven that he can hurt Stefanie if he wants to, and he does not become a better person just because he broke his hand and cannot keep her from running away anymore.
My biggest problem with Last Day of Summer is its flippant attitude with serious subject matter. Bonnie and Clyde and Little Miss Sunshine pulled laughs from their situations, but they never tried to downplay the seriousness of these people and their actions. Young people today have to deal with bullies in school and in the real world, and for some the pain is so great that they feel the need to take their own lives and sometimes the lives of their torturers. There is a lot of material for a filmmaker to delve into if they choose to tell the story from the perspective of the shooter. Gus Van Sant’s experimental Elephant only scratched the surface of school shootings and the mindset of a killer, but Van Sant treated the subject matter and the people involved with respect. Vlad Yudin, writer and director of Last Day of Summer, obviously did not put the time, effort, or thought into this film. Instead, Vlad Yudin substituted humiliation for character development, pity for empathy, and disrespected bullied youth and the victims of shootings alike.
DVD Bonus Features
Special features include a making-of featurette including interviews with the cast and director Vlad Yudin.
"Last Day of Summer" is on sale November 26, 2010 and is rated R. Comedy, Drama. Written and directed by Vlad Yudin. Starring DJ Qualls, William Sadler, Nikki Reed.
