[Rating: Rock Fist Way Up]
There are movies that are weird in terms of narrative and I will get to the point when I say Dave Made a Maze, is just plain WEIRD. Thankfully, the quirkiness of the movie only makes it more magical to watch and I admire the spark of imagination from director Bill Watterson and co-writer Steven Sears.
Dave Made a Maze is pretty much on the nose, telling viewers the entire plot of the movie. Dave (Nick Thune) decides one day, makes a maze. He isn’t the successful artist he had hoped to be, much to the dismay of his girlfriend Annie (Meera Rohit Kumbhani) and this maze building inspires him to get off the couch and do something. When Annie (comes home one day, she discovers that what seems like a small box fort, is really a full blown labyrinth. Dave describes it a bit like a Tardis for any Doctor Who fans out there as “bigger on the inside” and indeed it is. This leads to some of Dave’s friends Gordon (Adam Busch), Harry (James Urbaniak of Hulu’s Difficult People), and Harry’s film crew to enter the maze and find Dave before the mythological Minotaur can first.
This movie gets to the idea fast that this is all very much a childhood dream come true. Didn’t we all at one point want to have adventures in a couch fort or blanket fort? Dave is very much like a child. His imagination flourishes within the maze causing it to keep expanding and this is something his friends can marvel at, leading the rescue operation to take twists and turns thanks to this funny script.
One minute the characters are weaving through life-size piano keys and the next, the maze transformers them into cardboard puppets like we were watching an episode of Sesame Street. I never felt isolated to one particular room and never knew what could come next. Could you consider this horror or comedy? It blends the two genres so well that most of the time spent in the maze is wondering what’s behind the next cardboard wall.
With you, the reader taking a part in reading what this very wacky comedy has to offer, don’t spoil any of it for your friends. Don’t even tell them what it is about! I went into this totally blind and came out of it appreciating it for the humorous way it looks at how artists can take themselves off into wild rides of imagination that turn into sparks of insanity.
Dave Made a Maze opens at Screenland at Tapcade, Friday August 18.
Christian Ramos is a classic film fan, having had the dream to host Turner Classic Movies for years now. He also has a large amount of Oscar trivia in his head, remembers dressing as Groucho Marx one Halloween, and cherishes the moment Julianne Moore liked his tweet.
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