April Showers USA,
R, 94 m, 2009
Spurred by the 1999
shooting at Columbine High that left a dozen students and one faculty member
looking out of Ziplocs, April Showers should be one of the most
heartrending (and culturally unifying) docudramas since United
93, but the whole affair had me feeling weirdly disconnected.
(Spock-like apathy gave way to Bones-like twitchiness during the movie’s last
half-hour.) United 93 moved slowly and inexorably towards what we all
knew was going to be a tragic finish, and yet director Paul Greengrass kept the
action so close and urgent that we couldn’t help but wish for a rosier
outcome. It was as if we were reliving the morning of September 11, 2001, and
when the picture’s frenzied crescendo was cut short by eerily muted blackness,
the house was so stunned you could hear a pin drop from an Islamic
fundamentalist’s hand grenade. April Showers never captures that sort
of unease, even though it was made by a Columbine graduate who had the
misfortune of being there the day social castoffs Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
shot up a mess of their classmates before turning their ill-gotten arms on
themselves. But April Showers isn’t a reenactment of the Columbine
tragedy; it’s ripped from other similar headlines, too, such as the shooting
spree at Virginia Tech in April of ’07, as well as the massacre at the Van
Maur store that same year in Omaha, Nebraska, which is where this film was made.
(The mid-western setting may have been chosen for its airy, down-home quality,
but those of us who actually grew up there can’t see it as anything other than
featureless and boring.) The scene of the big crime in April Showers is a
suburban high school just east of Bumfuck, Egypt (okay, it’s actually
Plattsmouth, but let’s not split hairs); pencils, books and teacher’s dirty
looks are quickly forgotten when one of the students pulls out a handgun and
begins to blast away at anything that moves. Writer/director Andrew Robinson is
thoughtful enough to serve up only a taste of the carnage (most of the killings
happen off-screen); he spends most of his time wading through the event’s
bloody aftermath. The problem here is that we barely get to hang out with the
kiddos before they’re off and running for their lives; the bulk of the
production focuses on the survivors as they try to come to Jesus with what
happened. The Deer Hunter was particularly effective because it allowed
us to become intimate with its characters before it put their souls through the
wringer, and the film’s third movement—an exploration of PTSD—was made all
the more poignant for it. But April Showers isn’t affecting because it
introduces us to its featured victim, the titular April (Ellen Woglom), through
flashbacks that feel inconsequential and don’t really clue us into why her
boyfriend, Sean (Kelly Blatz from the fun Prom Night remake), or her
English teacher, Miss Sally (Illeana Douglas), were so taken with her. It’s
like attending a funeral for someone you never knew. April Showers
is virtually without humor; composer Dominik Rausch strikes the same two or
three blue notes on his piano all the way through, and the naturalistic,
slightly desaturated photography by Aaron Platt adds to the gloom. (Everything
looks hazy and indistinct.) Illeana Douglas is wasted (she’s little more the
Anderson’s go-to gal when he needs a shot of somebody bawling), but goofball
opportunist Tom Arnold has a couple of surprisingly good scenes as a math
instructor who winds up taking a bullet in back. Of course, you know you’re in
trouble when Tom Arnold is garnering all the acting props; he brings a little
zip to an ensemble that is largely remote, colorless. Some of the players are
just plain annoying: As Jason, a good Samaritan who winds up succumbing to
survivor’s guilt, Daryl Sabara is a drip—he recalls that ugly, wordless goon
in Little Miss Sunshine. The picture becomes even more exasperating went
it starts taking swipes at the media for its sensationalistic coverage of the
shooting; it’s a poorly thought out piece of satire, suggesting it was added
late in the game to help reach an appropriate running time. Anderson should be
commended for not exploiting this delicate material for cheap thrills, but
he’s so restrained that the film barely makes an impression. April Showers
is out-of-focus and dull. It’s Massacre at Central High for the
touchy-feely crowd. June 10, 2009 “April Showers” Review. © Copyright 2009 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.
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