Ambi-Curious

Related Content

• Mark Sultan: Show Preview
  May 2, 2012
• If These Streets Could Talk
  April 25, 2012
• "Kaboom": Gregg Araki's Beautiful Horndogs Get Blown
  February 16, 2011
• Hunt for Fun, Hunt for Pun
  February 16, 2011
• Sam Singer, Master of Disaster -- What's He Thankful For?
  November 23, 2011

More About

• Gregg Araki
• Kaboom (Movie)
• Thomas Dekker
• Chris Zylka
• Scooby-Doo

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

As spacey as its title suggests, Gregg Araki’s latest youth film is an occult mystery set in the ultimate SoCal college playpen. Kaboom is Scooby Doo with sex, drugs, and tattooed hotties; following on the heels of Araki’s relatively commercial stoner farce, Smiley Face (2007), the movie makes you wonder whether Mysterious Skin (2005), his surprisingly serious and emotionally subtle evocation of pedophilia, was basically a one-off. Now 51, the director seems nostalgic for the self-characterized irresponsibility that was his youthful trademark. Kaboom shows him nearly as rambunctious as he was in the early '90s, when he burst upon the indie scene as the leading bad boy of the New Queer Cinema. Like Nowhere (1997), the old-school Araki film Kaboom most resembles, teenage fantasy runs rampant. There is ample reason to assume the movie is a dream of college by “ambisexual” freshman and would-be cinema-studies major Smith (Thomas Dekker). Smith has a hunky surfer roommate named Thor (Chris Zylka), who sits down on his bed naked and says, “I’ve never kissed another guy before” — wait, that is a dream! With its pop colors and compositions — including a giant close-up of mac-and-cheese — Kaboom is a garish billboard for id unbridled. The film does have an excellent punchline, although even at 86 minutes it feels a bit long — mainly because Araki can’t help letting his camera linger over his performers. Hard to blame him — he’s assembled the best-looking cast in town and it’s largely his gaga fetishization that makes the movie so much fun.
Feb. 17-23, 2011