Hitting women is funny as long as they’re think they’re tough and they’re fat. What else did I learn from Wild Girl Waltz… Oh, racist jokes are okay as long as they’re about American Indians, gay jokes are cool if you don’t say gay.
I don’t know why I was expecting more from the picture, but I did. Probably because there are so many good moments with ostensible leads Christina Shipp and Samantha Steinmetz. Shipp’s a fantastic comedic actor and Steinmetz is really good at delivering complicated comedic dialogue. Steinmetz has a couple fantastic deliveries and Shipp’s always doing something great, whether she’s the focus of a shot or not.
But, like I said, they’re the ostensible leads. The real lead is chubby tough guy, rural loan shark, vague bigot Jared Stern. Writer-director Lewis gives him absurd macho man dialogue he presumably lifted from the old “G.I. Joe” cartoon. It’s an unpleasant viewing experience whenever Stern is on–his performance is great, so long as he’s supposed to be a complete jerk. He plays Shipp’s brother and Steinmetz’s boyfriend. Lewis apparently went with it for incest jokes, nothing else.
Lewis asks the viewer to suspend a lot of disbelief with Waltz. Sadly, it’s all just little stuff–Lewis takes no time establishing ground situation, for example. Instead he has endless opening titles.
I’m sort of mad I wasted my time on Waltz, while Shipp and Steinmetz’s performances are good, they’re not enough to make up for the rest.
ⓏⒺⓇⓄ
CREDITS
Written, produced, edited and directed by Mark Lewis.
Starring Christina Shipp (Angie), Samantha Steinmetz (Tara), Jared Stern (Brian), Brad Hemesath (Gary), Scott Lewis (Ernie), Kim Barlow (The Thief), Kim Gordon (Mrs. Wolverton) and Alexander Cook (The Wrong Guy).
Leave a Reply