Streaming Suggestion: The Karla Trilogy

Karla og Jonas

I am about to start a new series here at Growing Pains, looking at failed and unfinished YA franchise adaptations. This trilogy would definitely not count for that series. I wasn’t aware of the Karla series of novels by Danish writer, and former supermodel, Renée Toft Simonsen until the film adaptations dropped as part of a glut of Scandinavian content that has recently been added to UK Netflix (with plenty of interesting coming of age films in the mix). I accidentally ended up watching the series backwards, but for the record the three films—all directed by Charlotte Sachs Bostrup—are Karla’s Kabale [2007] (apparently literally a reference to Solitaire, but translated as Karla’s World), Karla og Katrine [2009] and Karla og Jonas [2010].

The series begins with ten-year-old Karla (played throughout the series by Elena Arndt-Jensen) living with her Mother, Rikke (Ellen Hillingsø), stepfather, Leif (Nicolaj Kopernikus) brother, Mads-Morten (Nikolaj Støvring Hansen) and half-brother, who is only ever called Lillebror (Jonathan Werner Juel). It’s almost Christmas and Karla is upset because her mother won’t let Karla and Mads-Morten’s father (Allan Olsen) come to Christmas dinner. After an argument, Karla runs away. The second film explores the relationship between Karla and her school friend Katrine (Nanna Koppel). They used to be best friends, but they’ve drifted apart a little and Karla wants to mend the rift, so she invites Katrine on a family holiday. There’s some tension between them when they meet Jonas (Joshua Berman), who is on holiday with a foster family, but usually lives in a children’s home. In the final film, Karla wants to get back in touch with Jonas, with whom she had her first kiss at the end of the last film, and they end up going on a mission to find his mother.

Something that is often said about the Harry Potter films is that they, as films, grew up with their characters. That’s true to a point, but it’s really more of a gear shift, from the bright and fairly kid-oriented first two entries to the darkness that encroached on Prisoner of Azkaban. I think the Karla series grows particularly well with its main character. Karla is 10 in the first film, 12 in the second and 13 in the third, and the screenplays never make her into a miniature adult. Sometimes this is done in ways that are very typical of movies for and about kids, for instance with a sequence in the first film when Karla’s mother is ill, and Karla struggles with being ‘the grown-up for the day’, failing to keep her brothers from wreaking havoc in the house, but at other times it’s more subtle. In each of the films, but especially the first and third, Karla strikes out without her family. When she runs away in Karla’s World it’s clear how naive and vulnerable she is right from the start, when she spends almost all of her money on an elaborate Christmas ornament, not really thinking about food or shelter. The series isn’t afraid to address adult problems, such as Karla’s dad’s alcoholism; being in a blended family, or why a child might be given up for adoption, from a child’s eye view, but Charlotte Sachs Bostrup pulls off something quietly remarkable. She deals with these themes without ever talking down to her audience (okay, there are a few toilet jokes in the first two films, but they feel quite separate from the more serious side), and she does so without ever making the world feel too dark. 

Karla Og Katrine

For my personal taste, the films get better as they go along, and the way each allows Karla to grow, by making us feel that the experiences of the last film have fed into how she responds to the situations she finds herself in in the next. This is especially clear in Karla and Jonas, where she is clearly more wary of asking for help when she and Jonas, searching for his mother, find themselves stranded in an unfamiliar town overnight, it’s clear that some of the experiences she had running away in Karla’s World influence how she behaves. We can also see this evolution in Elena Arndt-Jensen’s performance; she’s charming and energetic in the first film, but by the time of the third there’s clearly more going on behind what she’s doing, we can see more layers in Karla’s reactions to events.

I don’t want to go into great depth here, because this isn’t a review, just a recommendation. None of these films are great masterpieces of the genre, but they work as coming of age movies collectively as well as individually, and I find that’s rather rare in a series of films. Serious themes are addressed, but in a way that will be suitable for kids of the same age Karla is in each film (one caveat, if you’re especially sensitive about the language your kids hear, occasional S worlds give way to a fair few F bombs in Karla og Jonas). The performances, kids and adults, are excellent, and the family dynamic is so well written that it conjured a lot of memories for me of growing up with step-siblings around frequently. If you’re interested either in coming of age movies or in something intelligent to watch with older children, the Karla series is well worth a look.

Let It Snow

Dir: Luke Snellin

It’s Christmas Eve in small-town middle America and there’s a snowstorm. A group of teenagers are each going through their own relationship troubles, before coming together at a Christmas party at the local Waffle Town.

Let it Snow is a simple film. On the surface, it resembles nothing more than Garry Marshall’s saccharine multi-stranded holiday movies, Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve and Mother’s Day, recast almost entirely with teens. Happily, it’s a bit better than that outward similarity might suggest.

The various storylines break little new ground. There’s Tobin (Mitchell Hope) the nice guy who has realised he’s in love with Angie (Kiernan Shipka), the girl who has been his best friend since they were little kids, but she might be into JP (Matthew Noszka). Julie (Isabela Merced) has got into Columbia, but can’t decide whether to go because her mother (Andrea de Oliveira) is very sick, she winds up meeting and hanging out with Stuart (Shamiek Moore), a pop star passing through town. Dorrie (Liv Hewson) is working at the Waffle Town when the girl she’s been trying to message (Anna Akana as Tegan) comes in, but brushes Dorrie off in front of her friends. Dorrie’s old friend Addie (Odeya Rush) is paranoid that her boyfriend is cheating on her, which causes an argument between her and Dorrie, and leads Addie to find help in the form of an odd local character (Joan Cusack). Keon (Jacob Batalon) is just hoping that a prominent DJ will drop in on his set at the party. These stories all go much the way you’d expect. That said, there are some welcome elements here.

The young cast is full of talented and charismatic players. Isabela Merced (previously known as Isabela Moner, she changed her name a few months ago) has had a great year already, bringing unexpected heart to Instant Family and turning in a wonderfully high energy performance as Dora the Explorer, in what is still one of the most pleasant surprises of the year in movies. She has less to work with as Julie, but she makes the cliché dilemma her characters is in play and her connection with Shamiek Moore works well, especially in the scene when Stuart offers her help, and it doesn’t go the way he expects. In that moment, Merced does manage to square the circle of showing that Julie likes this guy, in the same moment that she’s a little insulted by his offer. 

The other main story is even more by the numbers. There are some charming moments between Tobin and The Duke (Angie’s nickname, because she was always ‘one of the guys’ as a kid), few more so than when they, along with JP, are in a church, Tobin starts playing the organ, and he and Angie sing The Whole of the Moon together. Kiernan Shipka and Matthew Noszka are both obviously having fun, and they have a dynamic you can easily buy as longtime friends. Yet, despite this, it’s hard to deny what Tobin appears to see: The Duke has much more chemistry with JP. It’s a nice touch that the film never undermines JP’s status as a very decent dude, but this also makes the inevitable ending of their storyline even harder to swallow.

Perhaps the most effective strand belongs to Dorrie. It’s refreshing to see an LGBT love story represented in a mainstream Christmas movie and simply treated as part of the fabric of the characters lives, rather than something novel or, worse, shameful. Liv Hewson’s earnest but open performance is winning in its awkwardness, especially when Dorrie presents Tegan with a ‘Quaffle waffle’. They’re soon going to be seen in Bombshell and on this basis I’m looking forward to seeing them in what’s sure to be a very different register.

Other characters are inevitably a bit short-changed, given that the film has to pack everything into just 93 minutes including the credits. While it’s nice to see one of the strands revolving more around friendship than romance, Odeya Rush’s storyline feels marooned in the more interesting and novel story between Dorrie and Tegan. Jacob Batalon doesn’t stray far from the persona he’s established in his two Spider-Man films, but he’s still got nice comic timing.

Beyond the romance between Dorrie and Tegan, Let it Snow is refreshing in its diversity. The group of friends includes White, Black and Latinx characters as well as a non-binary actor in Hewson. The film doesn’t force this as a message, instead it simply looks to reflect what the modern world looks like. Unfortunately not much else about it is particularly novel. This is particularly disappointing given that British comedian Laura Solon is on the writing team. Solon’s Radio 4 character based sketch show, Talking and Not Talking was at times gloriously weird, and I wish more of that sheer strangeness had been translated here. Only Joan Cusack’s recurring cameo as a snowplough driver who dresses in tinfoil and refuses to say why captures any of Solon’s more off the wall tendencies. It gets a couple of laughs, but it’s these unexpected moments the picture could use more of.

There are charming moments here, and the inclusiveness is welcome and commendable, but the talented cast are underutilised and that means there is a pervasive feeling of unfulfilled promise to Let it Snow, passingly fun as it is.  

★★½

Streaming Suggetions: Malibu Rescue

Dir: Savage Steve Holland

Tyler (Ricardo Hurtado) is continuously in trouble at school and his stepfather (Jeff Meacham) is so sick of it that he makes Tyler spend the summer taking a course to become a junior rescuer down at Malibu beach. After a while, Tyler discovers that the head of the programme (Ian Ziering) doesn’t want him or the rest of his team there, because they don’t live near the beach. Along with their scatty instructor Dylan (Jackie R. Jacobson), Tyler and his new friends decide that they are going to beat the top team of recruits in the final test.

Technically a pilot for a new Netflix series, but uploaded there as a movie separate from the series as a whole, Malibu Rescue wouldn’t be something I’d have addressed (or probably even watched) but for the fact it’s directed by Savage Steve Holland, who is one of the true lost talents of 80s cinema. Holland’s three teen movies of the 80s: Better Off Dead, One Crazy Summer and How I Got Into College are all anarchic comedies that, though they fit perfectly into the decade’s cycle of teen cinema, have a very particular tone and humour. For 30 years now, Holland has been largely lost to TV, working on series like Lizzie McGurie, Zoey 101 and Fairly Odd Parents, his only non TV project since the early 90s has been the direct to video Legally Blondes, the Reese Witherspoonless third in the series. I didn’t see any of those projects (they clearly weren’t aimed at me), but Malibu Rescue suggests that the spirit of his features has never quite left Holland.

Like Holland’s other recent projects, Malibu Rescue is definitely targeted at children. It’s simplistic, with stereotypically sneering bad guys (Ziering, and JT Neal as Brody, the leader of the elite team, the Dogfish), simple morals about family of various stripes and a very much expected ending in which everyone who deserves it gets their comeuppance and each of the misfits on Tyler’s team gets to show how what makes them weird is also one of their strengths. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just the nature of the film, and I suspect that this one will appeal to adults a bit more than most projects of its ilk because of the weirdness that Holland brings to it.

Fans will recognise some signature aspects of Holland’s work here, albeit somewhat watered down. The Momhacks vlogs that we see Tyler’s mother (Catia Ojeda) making call to mind a significantly less crazy, but still pretty funny, version of Kim Darby’s comepletely spaced out turn as Lane’s mom in Better Off Dead. Some of the running gags also hit on this tone, a little boy called Jeffy (Michael Mourra) who keeps bothering Tyler always turns up a laugh and even if the gags are simple slapstick, Holland’s timing keeps them fresh. Also straight out of Holland’s earlier work is a running gag with a deliberately poorly animated stop motion crab.

At just 69 minutes, the film never has time to let the pace flag, and it would definitely benefit from developing its characters more. The villains get very little to do, I don’t think Brody’s two assistants even get a line between them and even for a film like this, Brody himself is underwritten (though JT Neal plays the dumb jock stereotype well and gets a few good laughs out of some fairly obvious gags). Tyler’s team, the Flounders, get a bit more development, but everything feels as though it’s on fast forward, with Tyler’s shift from trying to get thrown out of the programme to embracing it coming very quickly. The Flounders basically get one or two personality traits each, with Dylan being a klutz because she’s lacking confidence, Lizzie (Abby Donnelly) being obsessed with first aid, Gina (Brianna Yde) being the serious one, but also obviously hiding something and Eric (Alkoya Bruson) being enthusiastic, supportive of his new friends, and a little bit needy. 

The cast commits and brings energy and warmth to their performances, you buy them as a group and hopefully that dynamic will develop in the series that follows this film, because there is plenty of room to open these characters up. For me, Abby Donnelly is a standout, nailing one particularly offbeat and surprisingly dark gag, while Jackie R. Jacobson has fun with a cliche character and, happily, isn’t paired off with anyone, allowing her to be defined by her journey to finding her confidence in training these kids (who are only a few years her junior). It’s a pleasure to see Curtis Armstrong, something of a trademark for Holland, pop up as a weirdly cheerful janitor. They don’t share a name, but there’s still a part of me that could see this being his Better Off Dead character later in life. On a similar note, Vooch (Jeremy Howard), the bus driver who gets the kids to the beach each day, is basically the character Armstrong would have been in his younger days.

Malibu Rescue is no masterpiece, and while because of the age of its characters it counts as a teen movie, the rushed running time means that it touches only lightly on coming of age themes. It's also not quite a fully formed work from Savage Steve Holland, but it’s always amiable and enjoyable, and the bits of Holland’s personality that slip through made me smile and laugh more than many Hollywood comedies of late. I hope this film and the series take off on Netflix, not just because I enjoyed it, but because its success would make, after 30 years, a new feature with Savage Steve Holland at full strength, a real possibility.

★★★☆☆