Home Movies is a Great Show

I would be disappointed that Teletoon is showing Home Movies opposite The Colbert Report, but honestly I have such a low ability to remember what time it is and to go and watch a show I like that it's probably better to switch between the two instead.

What makes the show worth watching is pretty obvious when you first see it. The dialog is largely improved and the characters are able to do their own back-and-forth dialog in a much more naturla way than if they had to squeeze their lines between storyboarded timings. Also the show is done in Macromedia Flash which lets them stick in detailed objects and keep them there without crippling some poor korean animator's wrist.

But if you watch for a few episodes you can pick up on what makes the show stand out. The premise, that a kid and his friends like to make movies together as a hobby, could have been something a committee at the Family Channel would have cooked up as a way to show kids being positive and productive and good role models. But Home Movies twists this around entiresly and shows this hobby as a reflection of some of the problems the main character, who's parents just went through a divorce and who really isn't especially talented or well-liked at school, attaches himself to.

What goes unsaid to the audience is that the movies they make are really really bad. Well, not 'bad' but just what kids given a video camera and no real guidance would end up making, imitations of movies they have seen in the past with no hidden brilliance or secret brilliance. We aren't expected to believe that Brendon has any real intuitive talent whatsoever. He even gets sent to art camp where his efforts are continually shot down by the counsellors.

But what he gets from them is the ability to control something in his life which he probably feels powerless to do in any other aspect of his environment. He couldn't stop his family from splitting up, he isn't good with people at school, he doesn't play sports (except as a plot device to interact with the soccer coach character, easily my favourite.) So he sets up a video camera and suddenly he's the boss and can control every aspect of what his other two friends do for a little while. Some of the best humour comes from the nitpicking and tension between Brendon and the other two as they are acting out some part.

The way this is presented, unvarnished child-like coping activity but told through adult wit and dialog probably conforms to our own memories of being a kid. We accept that we did dumb things and we had our reasons to do it, but we probably imagine ourselves to have the same inner voice and speaking style as we do now, because our way of putting thoughts into words really defines who we are, and it's a hard thing to imagine that changing.

The creator of the show admits to it being somewhat autobiographical, which is natural and didn't surprise me in the least. But it's done in this way where he's lending his adult reflections on the naive actions of childhood, without embellishing the physical action. Sort of like if the characters in The Wonder Years all spoke with their adult voices while acting out the actions of each show's plot.
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