Starring: Matthew Newton, Kristian Schmid, Jamie Croft
Director: Evan Clarry
Rated: M15+
BLURRED is meant to be a slapstick comedy about Schoolies Week, or more precisely about a dozen Year 12s getting to the Gold Coast for the week(s)-long festivities.
Combining the rite of passage and road genres, we follow five different stories, which only briefly intersect toward the end of the film.
Blurred is a mess. The acting is hammy, the characterisations are stereotypes, the cuts from location to studio shots are amateurish, and the story is dull. Even the casting is dreadful.
Everyone in Blurred is beautiful. Strangely, a film about late adolescence is an acne-free zone.
In between the faux-moralising, Blurred celebrates a self-indulgent youth culture that finds drink-driving, car accidents, serial killers, anonymous sex, strippers, cross-dressing, infidelity, class snobbery, home invasion, acid trips and stalking all a bit of a laugh.
In a weird way Blurred pins down the problem with Schoolies Week. It’s fine for Year 12s to celebrate their graduation from school. It just seems that we are educating our young people to think that their ‘rights to party’ transcend anyone else’s rights to safety and security.
At best, Blurred could be a teaching tool for Year 12 teachers who want to explore the consequences of moral relativism. They could show it to their class and then ask the students to ‘explain what’s missing here’.
It could just sharpen their moral reasoning.
