Swimfan is more or less appalling, yet somehow
manages to classify as a guilty pleasure. The acting is bad, the
whole story is given away in the theatrical trailer, and there
are thousands of enormous plot-holes; though for some reason,
when the few well-done scenes work, everything just clicks. I
have no choice but to not recommend the film because there are
more bad features than good, though it works as a low key date
flick for the many teenagers starving out there for some cheesy
material.
One of
the most obvious reasons as to why Swimfan was such
a mediocre, and wannabe, movie is that Jesse Bradford and Erika
Christiensen have absolutely no chemistry together. I often
compliment the casting directors in my reviews, yet in this one
I must ask them why they chose such horrible, and different,
actors to play the two lead roles. When viewing the
conversations that they held together it is abnormally tedious.
It seemed as if Bradford and Christensen were afraid of acting
each other, the innerving feel they created together was not
made by any form of cinema, but by something else; it was almost
like they had something against each other off the set.
I cannot
understand who would choose such an out of place soundtrack,
like this one, for any feature-length film. While the
actors were shouting and screaming, and tension is at its
highest, we get happy-go-lucky guitar riffs that somehow explain
how high school is unkind to its students in the
hard-to-understand vocals. When the happy soundtrack is playing
at the supposed-to-be-scary times during Swimfan’s
duration it’s no more outlandish than it would be to hear some
rap music coming out of a church.
Six of
the estimated twenty scenes we see in the film are any good, and
when in there prime, surprisingly quite excellent. The problem
is that the other fourteen are wretched, and painful to watch. I
actually thought that the cheap scares hidden in some of the
more haunting dialogue were actually very clever and
intelligent; though most of them are ruined by the trailer,
which gives away the last five minutes of the movie. And to tell
you the truth, if I hadn’t seen it, I probably would’ve loved
the entire picture, though if you have been to a movie lately,
you probably have; and therefore I wouldn’t recommend this.
Swimfan works in some cases, but the end result is less than
average. Though I have definitely seen worse in the “teen
genre”, this turns out to be just plain stupid. What
Hollywood
needs is a film that has the cheesy texture of a teen movie, but
is appropriate enough for young kids, and has intelligence for
adults. Why this is so hard? I dunno. In conclusion, if you
haven’t seen the trailer or any type of previews for this
otherwise water-logged, you’ll probably get you’re money’s worth
out of a matinee. But if you have, it’s just another lame
disgrace to filmmaking, or as Weird Al would say, “Another one
rides the bus”.
-Danny, Bucket Reviews