Terri is a film
that fits very comfortably into a box marked independent dark comedies about
disenfranchised youth. Terri is a fat kid who gets made fun of at school,
doesn’t know where his parents are, and has somehow found himself being the
lone caretaker of an uncle who appears to be in the advanced stages of
Alzheimer’s. It’s never quite clear how Terri got into this situation; he just
is. Probably so we can watch an indie movie about it. Bleakness permeates
everything in this world. There’s really no escaping it. Terri seems to be so
used to it that he doesn’t know any better, but for the viewer it gets pretty
oppressive. I spent much of this film wishing to get away from it so I could go
take a shower.
Large of stature and perpetually wearing pajamas, Terri cuts
a cartoonish figure, like he just stepped out of the illustrations of a
children’s book. Had he been a lovable schlub he might have made a memorable
film icon, something like a more hipster version of Zach Galifianakis’ Alan
from The Hangover. But that doesn’t
happen. The core problem with Terri is that he’s just really, really unlikable.
He isn’t lovably awkward, just awkward. He’s not a butterfly that needs to
emerge from his cocoon; he’s kind of just a big turd. He’s a bump on a log, a
real weirdo. We get a subplot early on about his attic being infested with
mice. His uncle James (Creed Bratton) sets him to the task of setting up traps
and killing the little pests. At first, the sound of the traps going off at
night plague Terri like the beating of a tell-tale heart, but once he ditches
the mouse corpses in the woods and witnesses a large bird of prey swoop down
and swallow them, Terri gets a blood lust. Soon he’s trying to kill mice
anywhere he can, so he has more victims to watch the bird tear apart and
swallow. He goes from an over sensitivity to offing a couple of rodents, to
having a weird fascination with killing in no time. And worse, the subplot
never ends up going anywhere. It’s just kind of dropped, and never mentioned
again. The only thing co-writer/director Azazel Jacobs seems to be interested
in is showing us what a creep Terri is, we’re never really asked to understand
him. And the thing with the pajamas: why? The only explanation we get for why
he’s wearing pajamas the whole movie is that, “they’re comfortable.” Really?
Clearly there would have to be a deep-seated issue for someone to start wearing
pajamas 24 hours a day, but it never gets explored. It comes off as a visual
gag meant to lend the movie indie quirk more so than it does a legitimate
choice for the character.
If it was left up to Wysocki’s Terri to carry this entire
film himself, then it would have been a monumental failure, but luckily he gets
some solid support in the form of the adult actors. Bratton is impressive in
the little we see of him as Uncle James. He’s playing a man whose mind is going
due to illness, one whose days are sometimes better than others, and he really
pulls it off. All it takes is one look at him to see if he’s supposed to be coherent
or out of it that day. I haven’t watched a more authentic feeling performance
of an aging and dying man since Jason Robards in Magnolia. Bratton isn’t preening; he’s not milking a chance to play
afflicted. He’s understated but effective, his eyes tell the story. Bratton
doesn’t get all that much time to shine though. The real reason this film isn’t
a failure on a spectacular level is John C. Reilly playing Terri’s principal Mr.
Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald pins Terri as a child in need pretty early on, and tries
to get through to the kid by having weekly meetings that he frames as just a
couple of guys hanging out and eating snacks. What follows is a series of
one-sided conversations where Terri sits blank faced as Fitzgerald dances to
try and get his attention. They’re kind of awkward to get through, but Reilly
makes them funny with his unique brand of playing the lovable loser. The
difference between Fitzgerald and Terri is that Fitzgerald is an extroverted
dork, not a creepy introvert. He might have been an interesting character to
focus a film on. Terri is just a hopeless case and watching him traverse the
world feels more like torture than anything.
There are a couple of supporting teenage characters as well,
but they don’t fair as well as Bratton and Reilly. What originally feels like a
small subplot where a girl named Heather (Olivia Crocicchia) repeatedly fights
off attempts to be fingered in the middle of Home Ec class by her boyfriend
Dirty Jack (Justin Prentice) ends up being the central conflict of the film.
Eventually Heather acquiesces, gets found out, and becomes a social pariah in
the school. This works out great for Terri, who is kind of sweet on the girl,
and who uses their newly shared status as outcasts to bond with her. The whole
thing played as ridiculous to me. We get to know Heather a little better, and
it’s explained why she did what she did with Dirty Jack, but it never felt
believable. There were a lot of damaged, slutty girls in my high school, but
none of them ever got close to being fingered in the middle of a class where
everyone could watch. When the consequences of her actions come down on her,
you don’t so much feel empathy; you just get angry with her for being so
insufferably stupid. The other teenage character we get is Chad (Bridger
Zadina). Chad is another of Mr. Fitzgerald’s charity cases, and he and Terri
strike up a strained relationship over time. The kid is weasely, fidgety,
completely insane, and has the nervous tick of tearing at his hair to the point
of it being visibly thinning. Chad is the trickster character of the film. Any
time it feels like Terri’s story might be going somewhere, any time it feels
like he might get developed or his relationship with someone might progress,
Chad shows up and ruins it with random craziness. There are some laughs to be
had from the kid’s antics, but ultimately he sabotages the entire movie. It’s
so consistent that I began to wonder if his ruining the movie was deliberately
crafted, and if so, why would anyone choose to do that?
