SPRING - Review By Greg Klymkiw - If "Before Sunrise" w/viscous fluids turns your crank...

When the moon hits your eye Like a big pizza pie, that's amore When the world seems to shine Like you've had too much wine, that's amore

Spring (2014)
Dir. Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead
Starring: Lou Taylor Pucci, Nadia Hilker

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Spring begins compellingly enough. Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) is a young chef in a local California watering hole who has been tending to his mother's palliative home care whilst she slowly dies of cancer. Once she passes, the only child (his Dad pre-deceased Mom) is not only consumed with grief, but loneliness to boot. Armed with a backpack and small inheritance, he hops on the first outbound plane which takes him to Rome. He eventually makes his way to a small burgh within the watchful burble and huffing/puffing of the volcanic Mt. Vesuvius.

Lava, however, is not the only thing roiling in these parts.

Bells will ring ting-a-ling-a-ling Ting-a-ling-a-ling and you'll sing, "Vita bella" Hearts will play tippy-tippy-tay Tippy-tippy-tay like a gay tarantella

The young man's loins are a stirring once he lays eyes upon Louise (Nadia Hilker), a babe-o-licious local lassie who also takes a liking to Evan. Given her charm, beauty and eccentricity, we're pretty sure she harbours some kind of secret.

But, no matter. We get to enjoy a fair bit of boinking (including some nice flashes o' flesh) and for all those romantics out there, there's a whole whack o'Before Sunrise-like lovey-dovey-wanderings around the gorgeous terrain.

Evan, however, doesn't get to see what we see. These delights include Louise biting the head off a cat, developing pus-oozing sores and eventually a leisurely sojourn with her pet bunny rabbits leads to a cave wherein she doffs her clothes and scarfs back her cute, furry Leporidae - a kind of Night of the Lepus in reverse.

Yup, something's not quite right in Vesuvius County. Hell is going to break loose.

Will their hearts become one? Will she eat him well done? That's Amore!

But you know, it really doesn't. We're forced to suffer through a mind-numbing romance twixt attractive twenty-somethings babbling a whole lot of inane dialogue with bouts of viscous ooze exploding Vesuvius-like from the young lady's body and even when she shares her secret (something involving stem cells), young Evan still loves her and keeps moping around, hoping they'll become a real couple someday which, it's revealed, is quite possible, if . . .

"Whatever!" I thought as I kept suffering through this insufferably twee 110 minutes of love. Not once do we feel any real threat to our leading man and those she does kill (aside from cute fur balls) are scumbags anyway, but the only real stakes are whether or not these two will find normal love together.

Someone watching this, I suppose, could care, but not this fella.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ** Two Stars

Spring is now playing theatrically via Raven Banner.