Young Zac’s dad thinks his son is gay. So does everyone else, including Zac. But will they all come to terms with it? Jean-Marc Vallée’s cute Québécois coming-of-age tale has already taken the audience award at Toronto and was the official Canadian entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. Fair enough. It’s difficult to dislike the film in any meaningful way. The changing relationship between father (Michael Coté, excellent) and son (Marc-Andre Grondin) is delicately rendered. A 24-carat retro soundtrack featuring The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and Jefferson Airplane (accounting for much of the film’s $7 million budget) provides the ambiguously oriented Zac with cultural solace and the audience with killer entertainment. The rambunctious family exchanges are never dull.
Still, though warm and delightful and all that gunk, C.R.A.Z.Y. doesn’t take us anyplace we haven’t been before. Zac’s mystical bond to his mother (surprise) and supernatural healing powers form an odd thread of magic realism, before the script changes direction or simply forgets the whole idea. If you’re going with flights of fancy drawn from ‘Sympathy With The Devil’, then stick with it or don’t do it in the first place.
A charming nostalgia exercise, just the same.