Daddy/Daughter Indie Darling Steals Hearts, Bikes.
DIRECTED BY CHARLOTTE REGAN/2023
BLU-RAY STREET DATE: NOVEMBER 7, 2023/KINO LORBER
A girl can only steal so many bikes before the bottom drops out of the resale market. That is just one of the unfortunate truths unearthed in director Charlotte Regan’s thoroughly charming humdinger of a daddy/daughter comedy, Scrapper. Winner of a Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, the film has certainly earned its share of admirers. I’ll gladly count myself (and my nine-year-old daughter!) among them. (Fact: My nine-year-old daughter, who wandered in on my viewing of Scrapper and never left, now calls it her favorite movie. “A little confusing, but my favorite”. No, it’s not a kids movie per se. But there you go.)
While Scrapper absolutely lives up to its title insofar as, yes, it’s scrappy. But! It also has an acute intentionality in its visual realization. The urban metropolitan milieu of the Chigwell portion of London has likely never been quite this colorful… even as it remains a clearly striving area. Perhaps we wee bit twee for some tastes, Regan is nevertheless going for something here.
Meet Georgie (Lola Campbell), a twelve-year-old girl who’s been secretly living on her own ever since her mother passed away. Georgie has everyone from Social Services to her school administrators fooled thanks to her skill for forethought, arm-twisting of willing grownups to help her out, and a little creative voice recording. Without fail, when her school calls to speak to a parent or guardian, she simply plays back the best canned responses she’s secured at the ready. Only her close friend and literal partner in crime, Ali (Alin Uzun), knows the truth. And he ain’t talkin’.
No sooner does Georgie and Ali’s stolen bike enterprise hit the skids than Georgie’s father, Jason, (Harris Dickinson- Triangle of Sadness; Beach Rats), saunters over the back fence and back into her world. This after his having been so causally absent for her entire life. She was so young when he split, she has no reason to recognize him. Having finally gotten the memo that his daughter might, you know, need him, this grown-ass Eminem-looking ne’er-do-well has put on his big boy pants and has come a’calling. But is Jason’s sudden reappearance as altruistic as he says it is?
That, of course, is Georgie’s very question. (Immediately following, “How do I know you’re who you say you are??”) Going through his stuff, she finds a freakin’ bullet. Jason, meanwhile, wonders what’s on the other side of a door that Georgie insistently keeps locked. Even though Scrapper is a quirky, sometimes dramatic comedy, it’s still a comedy- and an ultimately pleasing one, at that. So, any dork can probably guess how the whole thing ends up. But the pleasure, as always, is in the journey- and we get our share of wry laughs along the way.
Georgie may identify more with the dilapidated orphaned bicycles she’s swiped for cash than with any of her schoolmates, but she’s still a little girl at heart. In portraying her for Scrapper, Lola Campbell has delivered one of the finest performances of 2023. In a year when Oscar voters could only see fit to nominate variations on the same ten movies for all the major categories, it’s no surprise that the young star of this beneath-the-radar festival darling hasn’t accrued the Best Actress accolades she fully deserves. Needless to say, however, she’s one to keep a close eye on.
In lieu of having caught Scrapper during its contained 2023 theatrical run, Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray release of the film will definitely do. The presentation of the vibrant and textured movie comes through with satisfying bravado, although don’t expect much from the bonus features. On the occasion to chat up this, her first feature, on an audio commentary track, filmmaker Charlotte Regan awkwardly sputters, stalls, pauses, and self-deprecates her way through the running time. It’s as though the very concept of a director’s commentary was completely foreign to her until someone hit the “record” button. It’s honestly one of the most painstaking endurance tests of a bonus feature that I’ve ever encountered, and that’s saying something. (I remember back in ‘02 when I waded through all four discs of Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor: Super Deluxe Edition….) Maybe next time, they can arrange for a moderator to usher her through the process?
There’s also a making-of featurette, which does just what making-of featurettes tend to do. Finally, there’s the theatrical trailer. Whether Scrapper is a worthy acquisition depends wholly upon one’s appetite for and appreciation of lightly stylized indie favorites of the British persuasion. The edge is relatively mild, but it is there. Like Lola Campbell as Georgie, Scrapper finds its way with admirable determination.