Release Date: September 27, 2013
Currently Available via OnDemand Platforms
Director: Salomé Breziner
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Film Pulse Score: 1.5/10
It took a period of over five days for me to watch Salomé Breziner’s The Secret Lives of Dorks. Why? Because I kept stopping it to find something else to watch – so tragic was what I was seeing on my small screen, but I knew fast-forwarding was not possible given that I was called upon to review the movie. I finally made it through, and I must say that it never got any better. In fact, it stayed true to form; anything that seemed remotely appealing was quickly replaced with something disgusting, distracting, or disturbing.
Dorks tells the story of one particular dork – Payton (Gaelan Connell) – who is in love with the pretty, blonde head-cheerleader, Carrie (Riley Voelkel) who, in turn, is dating a good-looking but dumb jock on the football team, Clark (Beau Mirchoff). Perhaps because Carrie believes in true love for everyone, she helps Payton get his own girl in the form of Samantha (Vanessa Marano) who rather defies classification into cliques or “dorkdom.” The entire movie is more-or-less one long remake of every 1980s dork/nerd/outsider who finds his way in high school by ultimately finding someone who accepts him for who and what he is. If the film had been presented as a parody of these films, it might have fared better; but instead, it seems hell-bent on proceeding sincerely on its own terms and thus fails on them.
There are parallel subplots involving a teacher, Ms. Stewart (the vivacious Jennifer Tilly) who wants nothing more than to go out with the football coach who happens to be Payton’s father (James Belushi). Breziner beats into her audience that Bronko – Payton’s dad – takes life advice from various made-for-Chicago-Bears-fans videotapes starring Mike Ditka (appearing as himself). The other subplot involves Clark’s need to get to know about comic books, which provides a link between he and Payton (and, in a way, thus Payton and Carrie). I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that, in the end, we find out it’s because Clark has a friendship with a young, mentally-handicapped boy who likes comics. How this fits into the rest of the story is difficult to say because, well, it doesn’t fit at all.
Ultimately, most of the film focuses on the relationship that develops between Payton and Samantha and the set-backs their relationship suffers along the way. Everything – and I mean really everything – is ultra-predictable including the film’s need to including what we generally refer to as “gross-out” humor such as uncontrollable farting and projectile vomiting.
The script is abysmal and the acting dreadful. This is sad because the cast is not completely without a likeability quotient – their combined quotient provides the film’s 1.5 points. But they are failed by the predictable and pathetic script and careless direction. Not even the numerous life-becoming-comic-book-style-drawings segments can breathe any artistic or creative life into this piece of crap.
I really wish there was a great movie that actually looked at the “lives of dorks” – maybe a sincere documentary that followed a dork or a small group of them through a high-school year. Their lives are not without merit and they have stories to tell, for sure. However, this film, like practically every other film on this topic takes the easy way out and plays on our preconceptions and stereotypes and/or uses them to go for cheap laughs. Well, believe me, there is nothing funny here and the stereotypes on display only served to make me feel sorry for the people involved in the film’s making and not the characters they represented on camera.
