Craig Roberts in "Submarine"
“SUBMARINE” My rating: C+ (Now at the Glenwood at Red Bridge)
97 minutes | MPAA rating: R
JD Salinger never allowed a movie to be made of his classic novel The Catcher in the Rye, and I now think I know why.
It’s because his adolescent protagonist Holden Caulfield — so funny, entertaining and idiosyncratic on the written page — would be borderline intolerable in the flesh-and-blood world of film.
I base this on my reaction to “Submarine,” an adaptation of Joe Dunthorne’s novel about a Welsh teenager in the ‘80s. Dunthorne’s Oliver Tate is self-absorbed, judgmental and maddening in all the ways a young person can be, but while he’s fun to encounter on the written page, in the darkness of the movie house he’s an infuriating and irritating wad of mopey misery.
As played by young Craig Roberts, Oliver isn’t much fun to be around, despite the cinema tricks thrown at him by director Richard Ayoade.
For example, early on our furtively angry hero imagines what it would be like if he were to die. He envisions — and we witness — TV news reports of the mass outpouring of grief, of candle-bearing classmates, of spontaneous shrines to his memory that spring up on street corners, of platitudinous eulogies. (more…)
Butler's Cinema Scene 