Highland Park, the Movie.

[nain rouge]

For $4, Highland Park is now available for streaming on Amazon. Some of you may have caught wind of this film when they were shooting at the McGregor Library and other local locations - well, now you can finally watch it, pointing with glee at the Craftsman homes and familiar hollowed out art deco apartment buildings.

Starring Billy Burke from Twilight, Parker Posey of - er - Scream 3 fame, and the great Danny Glover, the film is a dark comedy about the woes of one Highland Park, Michigan. Sounds right up our alley, right?

Well, I hate to say it, but director Andrew Meieran "effed" up, to put it nicely. [[What I'm about to write may spoil the movie, so skip the rest of this post if you don't want to know yet.) Right off the bat, you know something is wrong when the film is set in modern times and yet both the mayor [[the former Highland Park High prom queen!) and the high school principal are white. Say, what? And as Highland Park rolls on, the hack job on history becomes more and more apparent. The city's only problem, the film pretty much states, was that the evil factories left for overseas. Forget white flight and all that junk, that doesn't fit the new neoliberal story line.

Look, I can forgive rolling in some facts about Detroit into Highland Park for the sake of storytelling - which also happens - but essentially "whitewashing" white flight is unforgivable and makes Highland Park about as realistic as a Disney fairytale. This movie, as Detropia before it, attempts to slyly rewrite history, blaming the fall of Detroit and cities like Highland Park on globalization instead of racism and crime. Predictably, the characters and background actors are a Hollywood-approved diverse cast, making Highland Park a quaint but hardscrabble town of the down on their luck.

If one was to remove the plot of Highland Park from Highland Park, you'd have an OK movie. Not great, but watchable. But as it is, it stands in a long line of fictitious history that is slowly rewriting the truth in the popular conscious. How do you like them beans?

[Király]

Thanks for the review. I nearly spent $5 renting it on iTunes but after reading your review I'm glad I didn't.

[southofbloor]

Thanks for the review - that's the sense I got from the preview but I'll likely still watch it as I can't quite get enough of Detroit [[et al) on the sparkly big screen.

[canuck]

For $4, Highland Park is now available for streaming on Amazon. Some of you may have caught wind of this film when they were shooting at the McGregor Library and other local locations - well, now you can finally watch it, pointing with glee at the Craftsman homes and familiar hollowed out art deco apartment buildings.

Starring Billy Burke from Twilight, Parker Posey of - er - Scream 3 fame, and the great Danny Glover, the film is a dark comedy about the woes of one Highland Park, Michigan. Sounds right up our alley, right?

Well, I hate to say it, but director Andrew Meieran "effed" up, to put it nicely. [[What I'm about to write may spoil the movie, so skip the rest of this post if you don't want to know yet.) Right off the bat, you know something is wrong when the film is set in modern times and yet both the mayor [[the former Highland Park High prom queen!) and the high school principal are white. Say, what? And as Highland Park rolls on, the hack job on history becomes more and more apparent. The city's only problem, the film pretty much states, was that the evil factories left for overseas. Forget white flight and all that junk, that doesn't fit the new neoliberal story line.

Look, I can forgive rolling in some facts about Detroit into Highland Park for the sake of storytelling - which also happens - but essentially "whitewashing" white flight is unforgivable and makes Highland Park about as realistic as a Disney fairytale. This movie, as Detropia before it, attempts to slyly rewrite history, blaming the fall of Detroit and cities like Highland Park on globalization instead of racism and crime. Predictably, the characters and background actors are a Hollywood-approved diverse cast, making Highland Park a quaint but hardscrabble town of the down on their luck.

If one was to remove the plot of Highland Park from Highland Park, you'd have an OK movie. Not great, but watchable. But as it is, it stands in a long line of fictitious history that is slowly rewriting the truth in the popular conscious. How do you like them beans?

Aint it funny, I have mentioned a couple of times on these threads that Detroit will never be mirrored by the stereotyping capitals of media; NYC and Hollywood.

I would wish on Detroit no less than a coterie of filmmakers who can express the culture from within. This doesnt mean going for straightshooting realism or docudrama. It doesnt follow that the first two minutes depict a shootout.

[nain rouge]

If not Detroit, some Midwest city [[Cleveland, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Gary, etc.) deserves a true historical film depiction.

[poobert]

Instead watch this documentary about life in the "other" Detroit enclave, at least, what it was like 20 or so years ago. As a Polish-American, I can attest to its accurate depiction of family life in Polish working-class America.