Fetching Cody (2005) – DVD

ZERO STARS/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras C-
starring Jay Baruchel, Sarah Lind, Jim Byrnes, Robert Kaiser
written and directed by David Ray

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Canada is a nation of amateurs. Some terrible national weakness has taught us to be sheepishly inexact, as if trying to tell a story or form a coherent argument were about showing up and meekly filling in time as opposed to a complex array of intellectual and aesthetic decisions. We'll do the job, but we won't do it precisely–and frequently, the results are empty shells like Fetching Cody. I wouldn't be nearly so angry about its failure if I didn't know that there were more like it–long, unbroken streams of arrested preadolescents looking to get points for being "serious" and "meaningful"–coming down the pipeline. Critics are probably the largest segment of the population who'll see them, which probably accounts for why we're terse in our dismissals: we know we'll wind up talking to no one but ourselves.

Despite taking place in Vancouver's downtown east side (an area that claims the highest HIV transmission rates due to shooting-up in North America), the film gives us a peppy opening with two lovey-dovey kids chasing a balloon on a bicycle. There is some extremely clunky exposition letting us know that Art (Jay Baruchel) and Cody (Sarah Lind) are street kids and drug users, but it doesn't really sink in: Art's Catholic School hoodie makes him look resoundingly middle-class, while Cody resembles an angry runaway straight out of a music video. There's a transvestite hooker named Sabrina (Robert Kaiser) and a smaller runaway child, but they seem airlifted in–at no point does verisimilitude kick in to persuade us of anything we're seeing. Nothing has been referenced back to its original model; it's a bunch of people shooting blindly in the dark.

Eventually, Cody has the bad form to OD, meaning Art gets left in the lurch. Luckily, his homeless buddy Harvey (Jim Byrnes) has found a discarded recliner that doubles as a time machine. Yes, you read that right: Fetching Cody is parasitic on The Butterfly Effect and allows Art to travel back in time to try and un-fuck-up his paramour's life. Only it makes the crucial error of playing the temporal hijinks for laughs, with Art trying to rescue the pubescent Cody from menstrual embarrassment, watching her suicidal gay brother Holden (Lucas Blaney) blow the top of his head off, and abruptly ending Cody's relationship with a lunkhead boyfriend through the strategic (re)placement of Christmas gifts. Thus the film wants us to take it seriously yet sabotages any hope of that happening–leaving us confused, annoyed, even seriously embarrassed.

The DVD features rationales from writer-director David Ray to the effect that he a) did all manner of research on street kids; b) wanted to introduce a "dark," "Grimm fairytale" element to the proceedings; and c) felt that some "humour" should be introduced. Unfortunately, a) plays like a point-form printout, not a well-sketched milieu; b) winds up making the proceedings seem glib; and c) is so weak and unfunny as to be cringe-inducing. More to the point, these elements are thought of in isolation from each other. That is, street kids, dark fairytales, and humour are individual concepts stitched together instead of synthesized–an intelligent blending of forms (see: Robert Coover) is missing. The film feels like it's ticking off requirements on a list, and it does so out of half-understood duty rather than self-initiated interest.

In a world with Gus Van Sant and Lodge Kerrigan and the Dardenne brothers, the destitute and marginal need not suffer such indignities. Unfortunately, none of those luminaries lives in Canada. For here, you can get away with the most facile of political tracts and be showered with grant money–and while I'm not against public funding per se, I am against the childish criteria by which both standard art films and Stursberg-era pop films have been judged. Money isn't the only thing that's required: we also need something that can inculcate the massive undertaking that is an aesthetic process. Otherwise, we will continue to allow our timid filmmakers to wreak havoc on unsuspecting "social issues," or hide behind their good intentions instead of firmly and fully stating a case. It's time for our filmmakers to start elaborating and stop name-checking, before more Fetching Codys blight our cinemas for their obligatory one-week runs.

THE DVD
Maple presents Fetching Cody on DVD in a difficult but likely faithful 1.77:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. Although the DV-sourced image 'rings' a great deal, ghosting artifacts become less apparent in brightly-lit scenes; colours are a little oversaturated besides. The Dolby 5.1 audio deftly renders an uncomplicated if occasionally creative mix. Extras include a commentary with Ray and producer Carolyn Allain. First Ray stumbles across his fairytales-are-about-the-marginal thesis, then the pair recount all manner of information about the marginal people on the downtown east side nowhere in evidence in the film. While Ray comes off as pretentious without the intellectual chops to redeem himself, the producer is reduced to a cheerleader, and neither one appears to know the enormity of what they've tried to do. Meanwhile, the aforementioned making-of featurette (8 mins.) is amorphous, allowing Ray to say similarly unsupportable things regarding the film's intellectual prowess while showing the exact method for blowing the top of one's head off. A couple of interesting tidbits do not compensate for a general lack of shape or focus. Also included: the film's trailer.

87 minutes; NR; 1.77:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1; DVD-5; Region One; Maple