Chain Camera

Kirby Dick's documentary features a clever setup: 10 students at a Los Angeles high school were given video cameras to record themselves for a week, after which they passed them on to 10 others for the same purpose--and so on throughout the academic year. Later, Dick collected the footage and selected 16 youngsters to profile, adding a brief epilogue shot at the prom and graduation. While Chain Camera offers some incisive moments and (often raunchy) humor, overall it's a disappointment, and one senses that the choice of subjects was based more on a desire for breadth than intrinsic interest (thus we get a blind boy, an extrovert lesbian, a shy gay guy, a class brain, an Ethiopian immigrant, an anorexic, a girl with Tourette Syndrome, a chubby fellow desperate to get a girl, and so on). Also, despite the campus setting, the film captures virtually nothing about school life, dealing almost exclusively with social matters (especially sex and drugs). But the biggest drawback is the fragmentary quality: Chain Camera never develops a narrative arc for any of the students; some are dispatched in mere seconds (one fellow offers nothing beyond a verbal riff about his talking penis), and even the most in-depth profiles amount to only five or six minutes of screen time. Despite the occasional flashes of insight, the film never manages to get much beneath the surface of its subject. Optional. [Note: DVD extras include audio commentary by director Kirby Dick, producer Eddie Schmidt, and students Cinammon, Ethan, Amy, and Jesse, as well as four deleted student sequences (13 min.), a “Back to School with Kirby Dick” interview with the director (9 min.), a “Woman with a Movie Camera” interview with producer Dody Dorn (7 min.), four deleted scenes (6 min.), an alternate title treatment reel, and a trailer. Bottom line: a fine extras package for a flawed documentary.] (F. Swietek)