Review of Kaboom (2010) by Jeremy T — 15 Nov 2011

Cinema at its most bi-curious, compiled as it appears to be purely on the pleasure principle: the colours are cranked up to the max, and even the grown-up characters wandering among these horny teens go under such descriptions as "hot-tub installing nudist".

With the first wave of Araki performers (Rose McGowan, James Duval, Jonathon Schaech) having graduated to, well, whatever it is they're doing these days - Duval has a cameo as a pothead - a whole new generation of actors get to push their boundaries and each other's buttons.

.. The casting strategy lends "Kaboom" a certain freshness, but it's the freshness of just-unwrapped bubblegum, and while, at 86 minutes, the film never entirely loses its flavour, it demands Araki keep folding in new ingredients to keep us wowed and distracted.

Some of these are better integrated than others: Litvinenko-inspired poisonings, allusions to "The Wizard of Oz", very [Bret Easton] Ellis-like daddy issues, a full-blown conspiracy of heteros that feels as Y2K as the Placebo track Araki plays out over the concluding moments, the final, butt-covering blowout of a director who's left himself nowhere to go.

(And who feels compelled to burst the bubble.) It's a grab-bag, in other words - as, indeed, many of those earlier Araki films were - albeit greatly more polished this time round.