Colma: The Musical

Reviewer: Erin Donovan
Rating (out of 5): ****

School's out and unlike the fantasies of liberation depicted in Dazed and Confused, Fast Times, et al, the kids in Richard Wong's Colma: The Musical are in paralysis. With no ambition to leave, no community to build an identity with and not even a car to get out of town (it's set in a suburb south of San Francisco famous for having many more dead people than living), these three friends are left with nothing but time to weigh upon their own turgid angst.

And it's this middling stage of life that lends itself so well to indulgences of their imagination: the dull commute to your deadening mall job is vastly improved with a dancebeat; a boring party is livened up with a sassy proclamation of how lame everyone else is; scoring a fake ID leads to a beerhall shanty; and a lonely walk through one of town's many cemeteries becomes a waltz with memories of the dead.

Not that our trio are living in a glossy idyll. Rodel is beaten and kicked out of the house by his macho father after being outted by a jilted, drug-addicted ex-boyfriend. Billy gracelessly copes with a recent heartbreak (that is wearing thin on the nerves of his friends) a comically degrading retail job while living at home with a mentally ill father. Maribel is an aimless but bawdy sexpot, killing time between under-age liquor scores and shuttling her increasingly dysfunctional friends to parties.

And despite its inherent lameness, the city of Colma is rendered surprisingly cinematic: there are graceful rolling fog banks, colorful houses in neat rows, airplanes flying overhead and numerous cemeteries with elaborate headstones.

Shot on digital video and composed on casio synthesizers for a paltry $15,000, Colma shows equal influence by early 90s talkie indies and Busby Berkeley musicals. Director Wong smooths over the frayed edges of his low budget with wit and energy giving voice to the wisdom of inexperience that hasn't been done this well since Freaks and Geeks was cancelled.

DVD extras include deleted scenes and a commentary track by Wong and composer/actor HP Mendoza.

See also: Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Open House, West Side Story, Ghost World, Hairspray, Reality Bites, Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Stick It.