Review of Emo: The Musical (2016) by Steve M — 06 Dec 2016

Was lucky to get a chance to see this while at the festival in Melbourne. At first glance I might've dismissed the film as infantile or childish, as some reviewers have said, but I went into this experience with a slightly more open mind than I normally would because of personal experience with emo culture in an American high school environment.

I immediately appreciated the fact that the film was brilliantly ironic and self-aware, unlike - I imagine - any number of films that might've spun the subject matter into something rather more serious and gritty. Clearly this film's most obvious aim is to entertain. And that it did, with funny, memorable characters in often cringe-worthy situations.

For children who enter high school with the myopia of youth, thinking those 4 years hold every moment of time in the universe, the banality and terror of that environment leave them few outlets for respite or expression.

Music, however, is one of the few ways for the film's characters to win, lose, cope and self-identify. I loved the songs and I loved the undertones of meaning - the struggle for meaning, too.

There was so much to enjoy in this film. I appreciated it's energy, it's style, it's actually hilarious and self-conscious moments. Bottom line: it's a film to have fun in, and perhaps less something to stress and ponder over.

If anything, it demands its adult viewers to, if perhaps unwillingly, try and inhabit a more taped-up, leaky, scrawled-on, distressed pair of shoes.