A BRAND NEW YOU (Kathryn Palmateer, Shawn Whitney). Rating: NNN
Most entertainments about genetic engineering and human cloning tend toward the serious, with heavy lashings of morality or irony: Frankenstein, Splice, Orphan Black. And the ones that aren’t preachy tend to be boom-boom actioners like The 6th Day or The Island.
A Brand New You, produced on a shoestring right here in Bloordale by directors Kathryn Palmateer and Shawn Whitney and their friends, is none of those things. Instead, it’s a low-key comedy about a widower (Manuel Rodriguez-Saenz) who enlists his roommates (Clinton Lee Pontes, Freya Ravensbergen) in a half-baked scheme to clone his dead wife.
Whitney’s script is basically an improv premise that’s metastasized into a feature, and the execution is awfully sloppy even by Canadian DIY standards: the cinematography is barely functional, and woozy indie songs are applied like duct tape over scenes that would otherwise have no clear tone.
But the characters are so weirdly specific and the actors who play them so invested that it kind of works in spite of itself. I have no idea whether anyone else will enjoy it, but I did.
