I've been wary of apocalypse films lately, with good reason, I think. However, along came "Love and Monsters," a super optimistic, winning, YA adventure movie about a young man named Joel (Dylan O'Brien) living in the wake of a global disaster that transmogrified all the animals on earth into gargantuan monsters. Once a regular teenager in Fairfield, California, Joel has been living in a bunker with a group of other survivors who have all paired off romantically. He pines for his pre-Apocalypse ex, Aimee (Jessica Henwick), who also survived, but lives in a colony many, many monster-inhabited miles away. However, Joel summons up the courage to make the long trip, eventually befriending a dog named Boy, a robot named Mav1s (Melanie Zanetti), and a pair of survivalists named Clyde (Michael Rooker) and Minnow (Ariana Greenblat).
This is one of those films that I didn't think existed anymore, a totally original concept (though very derivative of other monster and apocalypse films), with a decent budget, and no major stars. Producer Shawn Levy seems to have provided most of the momentum to get this made, putting the newish director, Michael Matthews, together with a spec script from Brian Duffield. The film is stuffed with B-movie charm. The monsters, mostly giant mutant versions of backyard critters like frogs and centipedes, are properly impressive and weird. Most of the film is a travelogue, where Joel encounters one deadly crisis after another, and gets away through luck, wits, or the intervention of his new friends. Dylan O'Brien is pretty solid as our young hero, who starts out more naive and useless than he probably should be, but grows up in a hurry.
I love the production design, full of overgrown abandoned houses, and comfortably cluttered bunkers. "Love and Monsters" looks much more expensive than it actually is, due to great use of locations and practical effects work. With its brighter, fanciful aesthetics, it's clearly angling to appeal to a younger audience, and provides a nice alternative to so many other apocalyptic films with unrelenting palettes of brown and gray. I especially appreciate the film's outlook, which is so much more positive and uplifting than you'd expect. Yes, the apocalypse has happened, and it's terrible, but its challenges can be overcome, and we can all learn to be better versions of ourselves.
And on that note, let's talk about David Arquette who decides, in his mid-40s, to become a professional wrestler on the independent circuit. "You Cannot Kill David Arquette" chronicles his journey to achieve this dream, filling in backstory about his jokey stint as a WCW World Heavyweight Championship in the year 2000, as part of a movie promotion, leading to his reputation as the most hated man in wrestling. This has always been a sore sport for Arquette, because he loves wrestling. He loves wrestling so much that despite his still fairly active acting career, and the concerns of his beautiful family, he embarks on this deeply ill-advised venture, in the hopes of finally redeeming himself in the ring.
I've never been a fan of wrestling shows, but Arquette's passion for it makes it much easier to appreciate the level of athleticism and skill involved in bringing these events to life. As performance art, there's nothing else like it, and Arquette's exploration of the more modest, less glamorous side of wrestling, is very entertaining. He makes a trip down to Mexico to train with luchadors, visits amateurs in backyards and tiny gyms, and finally gets himself in good enough shape to start participating in smaller bouts and matches. Arquette's own journey back to the ring is fascinating, and it's clear at every step that it could not have happened if Arquette were not a rich celebrity with access to the best trainers, the best equipment, and the right connections to the industry. How he does it, of course, is not nearly as important as why.
"You Cannot Kill David Arquette" is both a love letter to wrestling, and an absorbing quasi-auto-biopic that sees Arquette through this twisty, unlikely story of midlife crisis, self-discovery, self-destruction, and finally facing his own limits. I'm reminded of Joaquin Phoenix's "I'm Still Here" experiment, except Arquette is in deadly earnest about this transformation, and at one point nearly gets himself killed. Some of the narrative is exaggerated or outright fabricated - kayfabe - but a lot of it isn't, and I can't tell the difference between the one and the other. I really can't.
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