12 (2003/I)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

Lawrence Bridges

Writer:

Lawrence Bridges (writer)

Genre:

Comedy | Music

Tagline:

The Greek Gods are alive and well and living in Los Angeles

Plot:

A half-sister and brother, illegitimate offsprings of Zeus, are stranded on a Channel Island ranch and face eviction by the US Government...

Plot Keywords:

Hera | Pagan Comedy | Greek Mythology | California | Los Angeles California

Awards:

6 wins

Cast

Alison Elliott	...	Marie-Noel
Tony Griffin	...	Filmore West
Allen Lulu	...	Allen
Brenda Varda	...	Hera
Eugene Rubenzer	...	Zeus
Blake Robertson	...	Monk
Golde Starger	...	Aunt Debbie
David Franko	...	Pan
Eddie Zona	...	Hermes
Julienne Greer	...	Julienne
Mike Upton	...	Ranch Hand
Lili Barsha	...	Aphrodite
Lisa Stark	...	2nd Tutor
Mark Dalton	...	H. Tom
Regina Leeds	...	1st Tutor

Runtime:

124 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Filming Locations:

Channel Islands National Park, Channel Islands, California, USA

Trivia:

Took 12 years to film and was in continuous production for the longest period of time in film history.

Trys to be too epic, and ends up as an unconnected mess

The film 12 certainly is groundbreaking in its presentation. The guerrilla drive-in is a brilliant idea, in which the projectionist displays the movie on a wall in a parking lot and sends the audio to your car radio through a low-power FM transmitter. Incidentally, the projectionist at the showing that I attended had not obtained permission to use the parking lot, and the owner of the building came out about halfway through the movie, but he allowed us to finish the viewing anyway. The audio and video quality falls short of that of a theater, of course, but it's an excellent method for showing films without having to sign with a distributor, which leads to the reason (in my opinion) that 12 doesn't have a distributor: the movie simply isn't very good, and comes nowhere near the quality of either big budget blockbusters or Sundance/Cannes fare.

Lawrence Bridges spent approximately 12 years in production and post-production on this movie (hence the title), and although it has some decent cinematography, 12 is neither enjoyable nor thought-provoking. The movie plays as if Bridges was trying to stuff many years of loosely related ideas into one feature. Basically, the lesser Greek gods are forced by Zeus to act out Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" under threat of death. The squabbles between the gods cause disasters in the city of Los Angeles, such as the Northridge earthquake and the riots that resulted from the Rodney King verdict. Bridges uses real footage that he filmed during these events, and well it is an interesting idea, the film does not segue well into these scenes. They seem jammed into the movie, and do not actually affect anything. As the movie progressed, I felt that it lost its purpose, and that I was just watching a mediocre performance of "The Importance of Being Earnest." The fact that the characters were Greek gods affected the movie only to a small degree; it seemed to be just another potentially interesting idea that should have been better incorporated. Some social commentary on the denizens of Los Angeles is in the script too, and this is generally effective, funny, and often quite accurate, but these flares of quality do not make the rest of the movie any more bearable.

Anyway, 12 is worth watching simply because of the novel format of the guerrilla drive-in. Don't expect anything particularly groundbreaking in the film itself, but if you don't enjoy it, at least it was free.