Annabelle & Bear

Comments (2)

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  Janet Browne

  15 June 2010 at 01:14 | #

  We just saw Annebelle & Bear at the Waterfront Film Festival in Saugatuck. SEE IT!! It was so well made and well acted - 100% product of Michigan. Great job all round - I can see this as a commercial success if it gets picked up.

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  Nick

  26 July 2010 at 00:44 | #

  The film Annabelle & Bear which premiered this past June in Detroit is good film. One of the major flaws of the film is that its writer/director Amy S. Weber, knows it’s good. The film is about a “biker” known as Bear (Michael Spillman) and opens during a birthday party for the aforementioned protagonist at what we are left to assume is a “biker” house with “biker” friends. Bear looks the part as the bald headed, bearded, burly man that he is. The character is done all too well as understated being that “Bear” is a man of few words (god knows we’ve never seen such a character like this before; the loveable and bearish, soft-spoken man). In the midst of his birthday party, Bear’s meth addicted ex-girlfriend shows up to drop off their two year old daughter. Bear is as surprised to find he has a daughter as he is to see his ex. Or rather we assume he is surprised, as little emotion at best ever wrestles itself out of Bear’s hairy façade. The next half hour is spent with Bear getting awkwardly aquainted with his new found daughter Annabelle (Oliva Walby). After deciding Bear is in over his head with regards to parenting (balancing bike mechanic with child-rearing is too much) Bear sells his beloved father’s motorcycle, buys a beat up old Cadillac and heads to Maine-ward in order to drop off Annabelle with his estranged mother (Oh look, a pattern!). STOP! I’m not giving away the ending. And my cynicism is perhaps due to my perceived arrogance on the part of the Weber. The script is good. The premise is good. But the dialogue is simply too surreal. Every character in the film speaks as though they have spent years studying language. “Fuck” and “Shit” are completely omitted. Nevermind the fact they are all supposed to be bikers, one would expect to hear this talk in a bike shop at the very least. In the rare scene were appropriate vernacular is used; it comes off as forced and completely unconvincing. This may not entirely be the fault of the actors but rather, poor casting and a writer that was in no way connected to her characters types. The faulty dialogue may also derive from a lack of script work-shopping (friends and relatives don’t count as work-shop participants and actors are not to be trusted).
  All of this is not to say that the film was a bad submission. On the contrary the story was very touching. The acting on the part of Spillman and Walby was outstanding as long as they were the only two on screen. Being that the film centers around the relationship of the two, and their journey to and from the east coast, the heart of the film is therefore pure. While children can often be problematic on the screen, Walby is magnificent. Bear, when not made awkward by minor characters, shines as the caricature he is supposed to represent.
  This is a film that probably would have benefited significantly from direction coming from someone other than that of the writer. A writer too in love with their work to make the necessary changes needs a director to tame such arrogance.
  Overall I would give this film a C+. Cutting the minor characters (sans the mother of Bear) and the painfully cliché montage at the end would boost this to grade of B+. It seems Ms. Weber needs to re-submit for the better grade.
  
  Speaking of grades; the DWIFF website fails miserably. No clickable links for films to showtimes and synopsis? The call for entries for 2010 was still plastered to the site (from last year?). According to the website it would seem that the festival only exists for the sake of the festival. As Detroit is becoming more and more of a little Hollywood, one would think that those behind the festival might take advantage of this. Where is the presence of the organizers during the rest of the year? The lack thereof, coupled with the fanfare and audience surrounding Annabelle leads one to think that the festival exists for a select few to show off their work. While there is nothing necessarily wrong with this philosophy (an artist must work to promote themselves), I would be more comfortable with it if it was not billed as a sort of benefit or community service. A good start might be to change the “org” to “com”. A non-profit for the sake of the few seems hardly a community service.

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