Neophytes and Neon Lights (2001)

It’s not often that I don’t finish a film.  Many I’ve watched were bad, but I could finish them.  In fact, the only movie I’ve ever not finished and reviewed anyway was Time Changer.  This leaves me with a bit of a dilemma.  I want to review Neophytes and Neon Lights, but I only made it halfway through the film.  Is that enough to honestly review it?  In this case, I’m inclined think so.

The movie takes place in a teleport hub in Australia.  Apparently, teleportation has replaced air travel.  Yet, we never see one of the devices.  The basic premise is shown in an animation at the beginning of the film, but that’s it.  We see people going to baggage claim and whatnot, but no actual teleportation.  (At least not in the first 45 minutes.)

The movie is about a group of people that hang around the teleport station hoping to steal wallets.  They have a new guy, Turner, who isn’t doing so well.  When a passenger gets belligerent over a lost suitcase, Turner sees his opportunity.  He’s going to steal that suitcase, since it must be something valuable like drugs.

Turner winds up in the slammer not once, but twice.  He still keeps at it, even though it’s admittedly next to impossible.  He gets beaten and disrespected.  I skipped around a bit to find out that he does eventually get the suitcase only to find that it contains marbles.

To call the movie amateur hour would be insulting to those that don’t have professional experience.  The acting is flat.  The film quality is just above VHS.  There’s little to no plot.  It looks like someone had access to a warehouse for a few days and didn’t have the time to write a decent script.

It’s strange because several of the actors have been in good productions.  One actor was even in The Matrix.  Also, the whole ‘nothing’ aspect has been done with Seinfeld and Mallrats.  The advantage that those have is that someone actually took the time to make a movie.  This looks like the producers took what they could get and told everyone to improvise.

There are also a lot of random elements.  The movie even has a Mormon missionary.  Why?  What purpose does this serve?  It’s almost like Linguine making the soup in Ratatouille.  Putting more things in doesn’t always make it better.  One could be forgiven for skipping this one.  I kind of wish I had.

IMDb page