Sassy Pants (Coley Sohn, 2012): USA

Reviewed by Gustav Orvefors. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

It’s not common these days, that the audiance “after the film” aplauding the entire film-team. But I can’t come up with a movie that deserves it more. Sassy Pants is simply a great movie!

When I walked in to the theatre I was shocked by how many famous faces there was in the audience. I realized I was on the world premiere. Excitement, nervousness but also hopefulness filled the theatre at first, and there was a certain tension in the local… The tension lasted about two minutes in to the movie, untill it was replaced by absolute joy.

Sassy pants is a touching movie about the teenage girl Bethany Pruitt “Ashley Rickards”. She and her younger brother Shayne Pruitt “Martin Spanjers” is home-schooled and are controlled by their overbearing mother June Pruitt “Anna Gunn” that smothers them by not letting them do anything on their own.

One day Bethany gets enough, and in the rest of the story we will follow her on her journey to find a new life, and on the road find herself.

When I think about it, I can’t find one single character that I don’t like. I think that is becouse the actors had the freedom to evolve their characters to the absolute limit. The actors have really thought their characters through and that’s something you notice when you watch the movie, the characters are so personal.

The camerawork and editing have really tried to bring out the characters even further by holding on the closeups as long as possible. I can understand why Coley Sohn “as a director” would do that, to really show the great acting. But I think that it sometimes can be kind of bad for the movie. Less is more isn’t really something this movie has.  Some of the performances are full of emotion and feeling, yet are often because of their length replaced by audience confusion. Rather by feeling touched, the audience becomes distracted.

Something I find interesting, and agree to is something Coley Sohn said about the movie. When I wrote the script it was ment to be funny, yet when people read the script some of them descibed it as sad and dark. I understand why people get mixed feeling about Sassy Pants, becouse it is a really uniqe movie, and I also understand why people think it is both sad and funny at the same time. That uniqe mix really makes the movie great!

I was and are still amazed by the beauty and honesty in this movie. There are so many moments that leaves you stunned, and sometimes you don’t even know if to laugh or to cry. Sassy pants is absolutly worth your time.