Tribeca – Stay Cool
We’ve all been inexplicably shaped by our high school experiences: rather inevitable given that we spend our most tumultuous years trapped in a building with hundreds of other people undergoing the same hormonal uproar. Stay Cool is about those people who have never really managed to get beyond their experiences in high school.
Mark Polish plays a successful author who has been invited back to his high school, 18 years after his own graduation, to give the commencement address. And for him, everything has remained pretty much the same. He’s hanging out with his old friends, living with his parents, infatuated with the same girl, except everyone is an adult now.
The movie is mostly a comedy, but also something of snapshot of how the pain we feel growing up never quite goes away. There is little true profundity to be found here, except for a gentle chiding that we really do need to let go of the past, even though it is probably impossible to do so.
This was a clear case of a film deserving a three-and-a-half, but since such things aren’t allowed I rounded up to a four. Mostly because it was fantastic to see Mark Blucas (Riley from Buffy) playing a high school jock turned hard-drinking basketball coach and all around asshole. And because Winona Ryder is just absolutely adorable.
Source: www.nowrench.com