The Amateurs (2005)

With a star studded cast, The Amateurs is a low budget indie film that never really release to the big screen.  In fact, opening weekend was only on 3 screens country wide.  Sometimes it seems that the indie films turn out the best.  This film was on Netflix view instant, and we were on a Jeff Bridges kick.  Once again, the indie comes through.

The amazing cast consisted of names such as Jeff Bridges, Tim Blake Nelson, Joe Pantoliano, Ted Danson, William Fichtner, Patrick Fugit and many more.  Even though there were some big names in the film, all brought something different and unique to the table.  I was impressed that they all were able to play, with great success I might add, different roles than we have seen them in before.

The premise of the film is the small town group of friends get together to make a quick buck by filming a porno.  That turns out way harder than it was anticipated, and some funny stuff happens along the ride.  The camera man always has his handycam going in the background and that turns out to be the look of the production film you are watching, and they did an amazing job making it very believable as if that were the actual film we were watching.  In the end, they all realized they gained a lot more together by the experience than trying to make a little money.

The Amateurs had some of the best one liners of a movie I have seen in a long time.  I will have to watch this again, as I cant even remember most of them.  All I do remember is I had some good big laughs, and that has not happened a lot recently with the over stimulation necessary to keep the mainstream consumers happy now days.  If you are one of them, you may not like this film.  One of the funny trends though the film is the unique and humorous names used referring to body parts.  Chattanooga chu-chu is one of my favorites.  Can you guess what that is a reference to?

Script, acting, storyline and directing were all amazing.  Once again I am impressed by an indie film.  Amazingly enough, for the premise of the film to be creating a porno, the worst nudity in the film is butt shots.  I was very impressed by this, and thought it added respect.  Bringing something unique and different to the table of filmmaking is something that does not happen very often.  For this fact, I am giving The Amateurs a 5 star rating.  Is it a visually stunning film such as Avatar?  No.  Is it a technology pushing creative genius film such as Tron: Legacy?  No.  Is it a major tear jerking film such as Bicentennial Man?  No.  All of these have received 5 star ratings from me, and The Amateurs is not even in the same league, but it too receives a 5 star rating.

To fully understand, you need to see it for yourself.  I for one, after seeing films such as this and others such as Feed the Fish am a true believer in low budget indie films.  I will be checking out more to come, and I am highly recommending that you see this one.  I know I am not remembering all I wanted to say here, but I hope I am portraying how a film that never even hit the nation wide screen can be one of my new favorite movies.  It will be staying on the Netflix list, and we will be watching it again.  I hope you too will check it out.  I know a few of my regular readers have Netflix, so do the easy thing and add it to your view instant queue.  Most likely we will come away with something new next time as well; too much happened to soak it all in after only one viewing.

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