Monsters of California

Tom DeLonge – 2023

I wanted to like it. I wanted to love it. Some appealing characters, nice locations and cinematography, interesting ideas. Aspiring to be a Stranger Things with older teenagers. 2 points for Jack Lancaster as the requisite loveable pothead Shaggy/Slater clone. But then we keep seeing this whiny cocky protagonist with a creepy Casey Affleck voice who’s smarter than everyone else just because he says he is, who we’re repeatedly told is an awesome guy though he shows no concern for his friends beyond treating them like subservient sidekicks, who’s a proud atheist but believes in ghosts, who’s a science geek but “cool” in a phony “I wear 80s punk t-shirts" kind of way, who smirks while mouthing off to government agents but trembles in terror over cryptids, who effortlessly picks up pretty girls while working in a coffee shop and also shrieks at his mommy multiple times about how she doesn’t understand his bubbling angst. I almost never bail on movies, but halfway through this one, filled with horror at the premonition that I was about to be told the meaning of life, I suddenly fumbled for the remote in a panic crying “I can’t take any more!”