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| Whole New Thing 2005 - Canada - 92 min. - Feature , Color Director - Amnon Buchbinder |
| Category - Feature Color Type - Color Genre / Type - Comedy Drama, Coming-of-Age Keywords - adolescent, bully, homosexual, infatuation, teacher, public-school, homeschooling, intellectualism Themes - Questioning Sexuality, Crisis of Conscience, Misfits and Outsiders, Teachers and Students Tones - Bittersweet, Humorous, Wry Produced by - Acuity Pictures / Palpable Productions Release - 2006 (USA - Limited) Released by - Picture This! Entertainment / THINKFilm Cast Aaron Webber - Emerson Thorsen Daniel MacIvor - Don Grant Rebecca Jenkins - Kaya Thorsen Robert Joy - Rog Thorsen Callum Keith Rennie Kathryn MacLellan Drew O'Hara Hugh Thompson Jackie Torres Plot Synopsis A precocious teenage genius is suddenly forced to adapt to the real world, while the real world around him is having some growing pains of its own in this independent comedy drama from Canada. Emerson Thorsen (Aaron Webber) is an exceptionally talented and intelligent 13-year-old who has been raised and educated by his free-thinking parents ,Rog (Robert Joy) and Kaya (Rebecca Jenkins). While Emerson is clever, witty, and has recently written his first novel, he doesn't seem to have very good socialization skills when he spends time with others, and as he enters adolescence, Rog and Kaya decide to enroll him in public school so he can learn how to function with others (as well as patching up some gaps in his education). While most of Emerson's teachers are happy to have him in class, his ambiguous sexuality and tart intellectualism make him an immediate target for bullies in his small Nova Scotia town. Emerson's English teacher, Don Grant (Daniel MacIvor), has a bigger problem than most with his new student - Emerson becomes quite infatuated with Don, and isn't at all shy about expressing his attraction, while the closeted Don is torn between a desire to return his advances and the knowledge that he'd be throwing away his career in education if he even acknowledged them. Whole New Thing received its world premier at the 2004 Toronto Film Festival. - Mark Deming, AMG |
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| This dramedy marks the engrossing debut of Aaron Webber as Emerson, a 13-year-old who lives with his eco-nudist parents (Rebecca Jenkins and Robert Joy) in rural Nova Scotia and has a confidence that is delightfully at odds with his asymmetrical hairstyle and fantasy-genre preoccupations. Emerson successfully negotiates the transition from home schooling to middle school, but fails to grasp adult sexual boundaries when he becomes infatuated with his teacher (Daniel MacIvor, who co-wrote the clever screenplay). The film sells out Emerson in the end, but the characters are all original and memorable. Jim Slotek, Jam! Movies |
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| Whole New Thing is an absurdly-unflinching oddity with tricky plotpoints -- from a teen's first wet dream, to his crush on a male teacher, to the teacher cruising public washrooms. Director Amnon Buchbinder's approach is to normalize it. It's the story of a precocious, bisexual 13-year-old, home-schooled in the woods near Halifax by aging hippies, and dropped cold-turkey into public school, where he freaks out pretty much everybody. You'd expect all this quirk and sturm-und-drang to explode like emotional pop rocks. Instead, Whole New Thing is wrapped in sad pennywhistles and mopily paced like a typical Canadian movie, as if to underscore the "normality" of it all. This approach triggers the memory of too many less-than-stellar Genie Award years, and, apart from flashes of enjoyable quirk, makes Whole New Thing far less provocative than it sounds. Thankfully, it has a fascinating central attraction -- newcomer Aaron Webber, who is almost insectlike as he glides through the movie commanding attention. The Sundance Fest routinely crowns new sensitive indie "it" kids, and Webber seems better than most of them. As we meet Emerson Thorsen (Webber), he has just experienced his first wet dream. He is understandably uncomfortable and quietly surly as he receives huggy advice from his New Agey parents, Kaya (Rebecca Jenkins) and Rog (Robert Joy). Rog is a famous writer and pretty tightly-wound for a hippie, and his relationship with Kaya seems rather cold (a nod to Kaya's not exactly unpredictable adultery that is revealed later on). More jarring, however, is the nod his parents have finally made to the "establishment." They're sending him to school. Seems a life of home schooling has left Emerson Thorsen with the ability to write a whole novel, but no facility with science or math. And there he arrives like an androgynous visiting alien, taking beatings with analytical blitheness, and eliciting strange reactions from schoolmates to his family's naked saunas. What becomes clear is that Emerson has no sense of social boundaries, most tellingly when his initial dislike of his English teacher Don Grant (Daniel MacIvor) turns into an aggressive crush. Grant, who spends his free time cruising public washrooms, nonetheless has the good sense to rebuff Emerson -- a rejection that propels the movie to what amounts to a climax. (Whole New Thing is not a movie with dramatic repercussions, even for things like trashing someone's house). Zipless sex aside, McIvor's character is decent enough, and there's even a facile subplot about his inability to commit, revealed when he accidentally cruises a former partner. As for Rog and Kaya, they just seem dislikable, selfish and hypocritical. You almost want to have Children's Aid ready on speed dial. BOTTOM LINE: A lot of great ideas and flashes of enjoyable quirk wrapped in sad pennywhistles and typically mopey Canadian-movie pacing. The revelation is Aaron Webber, an almost-androgynous young actor who blithely floats through this movie like a visiting alien, and is the singular remarkable thing about it. |
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Reviews Kim Linekin, EYE WEEKLY |
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