Smoke Signals: I'm Amazed I Didn't Hear About This Movie Sooner

One of my favorite things about director Chris Eyre's Smoke Signals is how effectively it manages expectations. I walked into this movie absolutely blind, yet within moments, I knew exactly what kind of movie it would be. Ultimately, this movie is about a cross-country trip by two boys of the Coeur d'Alene Native tribe to scatter the ashes of a deceased father in a river. However, what might not be immediately apparent from the tenderly tragic premise of Smoke Signals is that it is one of the funniest movies I've seen this year. I won't be posting as many reviews as schoolwork continues to ramp up this senior year of college. Yet, while this particular review of a specific movie has been sitting in my drafts for about a month, I knew I had to say something eventually. The deadpan jokes and dialogue on display here are both hilarious and compelling. Smoke Signals does more with less - less glamour, less humor that begs for your attention - and plays the hand it's been given as gracefully as one could ever ask it to be played.

The minimalism of Smoke Signals is an awesome thing to see. At one point, Victor - a young man and the main character of the movie - walks through a door. A coming-of-age element is one of the key ingredients of this movie, and as the door shuts, Victor is suddenly a young boy again. It's an amazing effect, yet also a quiet one - it never demands attention. Smoke Signals is also both funny and personable, spectacularly so. Watching it is very much like listening to the class clown tell their life story, a story that may or may not be embellished for maximum impact. The characterization of this movie isn't anything unusual, and its road trip trappings are familiar, but Victor and Thomas remain easy to root for and travel with. They're like someone else's smart-mouthed kid in the back of a car on a road trip - amusingly fun to listen to because you're not actually in the car with them.

I love how different Victor and Thomas are. Thomas is comedic and erratic, while Victor is stoic and steady. Their respective personalities complement each other perfectly, and both boys are a true delight to watch together. Smoke Signals is about the highs and lows, the good and the bad of a dysfunctional family and how the victims come together because of their shared bad memories. The whiplash between humor and tragedy is beautifully realized, and the movie becomes increasingly satisfying as the big picture comes into view. To level one singular complaint against it, Smoke Signals suffers from what I'm going to call car crash syndrome, where it introduces new conflicts that lack any prior setup for the crisis, nor the new characters involved in it. At its worst, Smoke Signals opts out of finding creative ways to introduce crisis, and as a result, it sometimes lacks relevance to its own narrative arc. Nevertheless, this movie is trying to do one thing - paint a wonderful picture of a great friendship - and it does that one thing very well. It's a very down-to-earth movie, the type anyone could relate to.

This movie is a largely clever, pinpointedly poignant, and even surprisingly funny window into both what dysfunctional fathers do to a family and the lengths to which their children will go to process all the emotional baggage. The casting and acting in Smoke Signals are both a more-than-minor miracle, with brothers Victor and Thomas comprising what could be my favorite movie duo I've seen this year, at least thus far. This is a buddy film that hovers around the highest quality a buddy film can attain, a tour de force of relentlessly deadpan humor and moments that will undoubtedly bring to mind moments you've shared with a good friend, both good and bad. I'm amazed I'd never heard of Smoke Signals before this semester, but I'm here now and telling you that this is an absolute must-watch. Its simplicity may hurt it as its later chapters demand more substance than its simple and fierce focus on character is willing to give, but rarely have I seen a buddy film so attractively friendly. If Citizen Kane is fine dining in Paris, then Smoke Signals is burgers with the boys, which I'd argue to be just as valuable.

Smoke Signals - 9/10

Proverbs 18:24