"Daydream Nation Blu-Ray Review - Written by Anthony T

Daydream Nation
Year: 2011
Director: Michael Goldbach
Stars: Kat Dennings,Josh Lucas, Reece Thompson
Studio: Anchor Bay Entertainment
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 98 Mins

Film Synopsis:

“Daydream Nation” follows a seventeen year old girl (Kat Dennings), who is recently moved to a tiny town with her father. She comes to realize that she has nothing in common with her follow classmates. The only person that she has something in common with is a handsome teacher (Josh Lucas). They start to see other people to erase any suspicions with the two. In order to hide her affair with the teacher, she starts to date a troubled classmate that actually likes her. Soon she get caught up in a love triangle that could hurt everyone involved.

Film Review:

Going into “Daydream Nation”, I didn’t know what to expect as there were a lot comparisons with this film. From films like “Donnie Darko“, to “American Beauty” meets “Juno”, I knew, that this was going to be one of those weird films. For the most part, this film was weird from a visual standpoint, but nonetheless I enjoyed it.

Writer/ Director Michael Goldbach does a good job delivering a film that stands on it own, from most coming of age dramas. One of the important aspects in this film was the way the film is directed. I liked, how Goldbach takes his time to get the right shots that he needs., as you get some good visuals from it. You need the direction to have visuals, when a story like this calls for it to keep the audience invested. Here the visuals are simple, but there are some scenes where the imagery fits the tone and subject matter quite well. That’s what make a weird film work very well. Another thing that Goldbach does well was the way that he lets the performances stand out. I really liked, Kat Denning’s and Josh Lucas’ performances here. They both do a very good job creating chemistry between each other, while having their characters standout. It doesn’t make you totally rely on the relationship that the characters have. Instead, it makes you rely on the characters and the various crisis that are going with each of the characters.

Goldbach’s screenplay was a very interesting one to say the least. One of the reasons that it was good, the screenplay has an edgy feel to it. He makes this screenplay not feel like your typical run of the mill coming of age dramas. Goldbach does a very good job making some of the characters quirky. It’s done in that way, so it doesn’t get too weird to the point that you lose interest in the love triangle. By doing that, it helps you become interested in the film. This film could have gone a lot of different ways as you had the serial killer subplot, you had the teacher who is going though a midlife crisis and you had this love triangle, which in most movies would have had more tension to it. But none of those really took center stage, as the film stays on its course and focuses on the teenager and how her actions are effecting her and those closest to her. It makes it more of a compelling drama than an after school special.


Disc Review:

Sadly, this blu-ray doesn’t have a lot of useful extras. The only extra besides trailers for upcoming Anchor Bay releases is a six and a half minute behind the scenes featurette called “Behind the Scenes of Daydream Nation”. This is pretty a basic behind the scenes that contains interviews with the cast talking about their characters and the film director briefly talking about how he came with the idea of the film. It could have been nice, if this blu-ray had an audio commentary track that went into the film’s production, because there is none of that in the behind the scenes feature. I know that it’s asking much for an independent film, but there have been other independent film releases on blu-ray that had those various features.

Summary.

“Daydream Nation’ is a entertaining film with good performances and a solid screenplay. I just wished that the blu-ray disc had more bonus content, like a audio commentary and an in depth behind the scenes featurette to get a sense of what the production was like .

Film Rating - Three and a half Stars
DVD Extras - One Star