The new film, Kaboom, is a bit of return-to-form for him after the wonderful, meandering stoner comedy Smiley Face. (Shockingly and appallingly, I have yet to see Mysterious Skin, but I'm moving it up the Netflix queue to resolve that). This is more of a looser Nowhere, an assemblage of sexually-charged near-misses and scenes threatening a tragic third act, here given some breathing room and a dash of David Lynch-style ominousness. The cynical and hyper-sexualized teens that have populated most of his films are here. His dialogue is in that same smart-aleck style but here is slightly lighter and looser as well. Sadly, the sprawl and dream-logic seems to get tangled up in the mystery story structure of Kaboom. To paraphrase Joe Bob Briggs, there's too much plot getting in the way of the sex.Smith, the lead, is an aimless bisexual college student hot for his roommate and involved with one of his two gal Fridays. He also may be the "chosen son" and trigger of some pending possible apocalypse. Or it could just be the arduous ennui of turning 19. Between random sex-romps and the mystery of a possibly-imaginary trio of animal headed murderers, things stay off-kilter for the duration. What Araki captures best is that teens-and-twenties sense having an aimless, endless future in a world threatening to go over the edge coupled with a messy, sprawling libido.
