The Phoenix Network:
 
 
 
About  |  Advertise
 
Features  |  Reviews
FIND MOVIES
Movie List
Loading ...
or
Find Theaters and Movie Times
or
Search Movies
WFNX_1000x50g

The Tracey Fragments

A torturously stylized melodrama
By PETER KEOUGH  |  June 25, 2008
1.5 1.5 Stars
thetraceyfragmentsinsi675de.jpg

Fans of Juno will rejoice to learn that Ellen Page has starred in other precious, pretentious, pseudo-hip quirky movies. As the title character in Bruce McDonald’s torturously stylized melodrama, she’s younger and less wise-ass than in her recent Oscar-nominated role, but thanks to the fragmentation, she’s at least as annoying. McDonald infests the screen with multi-frames that at best hurt the eyes and underscore the obvious. But the onslaught doesn’t hide the tale’s triteness. A 15-year-old misfit, bullied at school by big-busted blonde classmates as “the titless wonder” and misunderstood at home by her feckless, clichéd parents, Tracey runs away to seek her cretinous younger brother, who has wandered off while she was supposed to be minding him. She ends up on a city bus wearing a shower curtain. Why? By the time she’s related her analogy about the dead girl in the ditch sprouting flowers for the bees, only the hardcore will care. 77 minutes | Brattle: June 27–July 3

Related: Below the surface, Crossing over, Death watch, More more >
  Topics: Reviews , Entertainment, Movies, Ellen Page,  More more >
| More

ARTICLES BY PETER KEOUGH
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   REVIEW: WHERE DO WE GO NOW?  |  May 22, 2012
    Lebanese director Nadine Labaki's whimsical film about internecine slaughter has a tone problem from the very start: a group of widows engage in a goofy line dance while the voiceover narrator bewails the death toll of religious warfare.
  •   REVIEW: MEN IN BLACK 3  |  May 24, 2012
    Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg), a fifth dimensional alien, can see the infinite possibilities each moment possesses and the infinite contingencies that caused it to happen.
  •   INTERVIEW: RICHARD LINKLATER MESSES WITH TEXAS IN BERNIE  |  May 16, 2012
    No matter how far he strays, Richard Linklater's heart remains in Texas.
  •   REVIEW: THE DICTATOR  |  May 16, 2012
    Though his PR campaign might suggest otherwise, Sacha Baron Cohen has actually made (with director Larry Charles) a sweet movie, not unlike Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator , if less sentimental.
  •   REVIEW: THE HUNTER  |  May 17, 2012
    Apparently extinct since the 1930s, the Tasmanian Tiger resembled an uncanny assortment of mismatched parts from other animals. Daniel Nettheim's film is equally weird and motley.

 See all articles by: PETER KEOUGH



  |  Sign In  |  Register
 
thePhoenix.com:
Phoenix Media/Communications Group:
TODAY'S FEATURED ADVERTISERS
Copyright © 2012 The Phoenix Media/Communications Group