Garage Days (July 18/03)

I suppose Alex Proyas deserves some kudos for breaking away from the dark and sinister worlds of his first two films, The Crow and Dark City - but with Garage Days, he winds up going too far in the opposite direction.

The film follows the members of a fledgling rock bad - consisting of lead singer Freddy (Kick Gurry), guitarist Joe (Brett Stiller), bassist Tanya (Pia Miranda), and drummer Lucy (Chris Sadrinna) - as they attempt to make it big, while also sort out the various problems in their personal lives. With the help of their roadie, Bruno, (Russell Dykstra) and lyricist, Kate, (Maya Stange), the four musicians work towards their ultimate goal - playing their music for the hottest manager in Australia, Shad Kern (Martin Csokas).

Garage Days (not too surprisingly) has style to spare, with Proyas inserting kooky camera tricks in the least expected places. It's that over-the-top sensibility that keeps this admittedly routine storyline from becoming an all-out bore. Just when the film begins to sink into predictability, Proyas will whip out a sequence featuring a character on an LSD high hallucinating her parents singing Rick James' Superfreak while attached to snake bodies. And though Proyas' visual hijinks were better served in his earlier movies, they are unquestionably the highlight of Garage Days.

The real problem is that none of the central characters are terribly compelling, primarily because they've been drawn in broad strokes - ie there's the eager-to-please one, the sardonic one, the wild one, etc. Proyas (along with screenwriters Dave Warner and Michael Udesky) doesn't really take these people anywhere new or exciting; instead, the script puts the characters through the motions of a soap opera-esque storyline. The film's primary focus, aside from the band's attempts to get signed, is a love story concerning Freddy's attempts to date Kate, even though he's currently dating Tanya, while Kate (who's pregnant) tries to decide whether or not to stick with Joe, who's sleeping with a goth groupie, etc, etc. It's kind of interesting, in a Melrose Place sort of way, but there's nothing here we haven't seen before in countless Aaron Spelling shows.

But the film always remains watchable, mostly due to Proyas' direction and a killer soundtrack (featuring everyone from The Cure to Tom Jones to Travis), while the unfamiliar cast brings a suitable amount of enthusiasm to the material. Gurry, who spends most of the flick gazing upon his surroundings with wide-eyed wonder, comes off like an Australian Jimmy Fallon and proves to be an exceedingly charismatic leading man. Stange essentially acts as the emotional core of the film and does a nice job of portraying Kate's confusion and indecision. Interestingly enough, Garage Days spends very little time actually dealing with the music proffered by the central characters; then again, the whole point of the film seems to be that following your dream is more important than whether or not you're actually any good at your dream.