‘My Old School’ Review: An Entertaining, Inventive Doc Undercut By Its Self-Indulgent Silliness [Sundance]

“My Old School,” a documentary by Jono McLeod, opens with an enticing montage. Interviewees speak ominously about a mysterious character who’s done something strange — a man who may even be unhinged enough to have changed his identity through facial reconstruction. But the story the film goes on to tell doesn’t merit this supervillain setup, especially since it refuses to condemn its subject’s very contemptible actions. Though “My Old School” is inventive in some ways and plenty entertaining, its self-indulgent silliness undercuts any shot at a long-lasting impact.

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The film tells the story of one bizarre year at McLeod’s secondary school, Bearsden Academy, in a suburb of Glasgow, Scotland. McLeod uses himself, his classmates and teachers as interviewees. It focuses on one suspicious character in their class, a boy named Brandon Lee, and the role he played in the lives of his schoolmates. Because Lee refused to be filmed for the documentary but consented to an audio interview, Alan Cumming stands in for him and lip-syncs his interview. Animated interludes tell the story in flashback.

It’s always thrilling to see a documentarian get creative like this, and the hybrid format works fairly well, even if the animation isn’t the prettiest and Alan Cumming is unmistakably Alan Cumming. “My Old School” doesn’t fall apart because of how it tells its story, it falls apart because it isn’t sure what story it wants to tell. Even McLeod is unsure how to announce himself within the film — he is introduced merely as one of Brandon’s schoolmates, though he seems to have barely come into contact with Lee as a teen. Oddly, we don’t learn that he is the filmmaker until the very end.

That ambivalence hobbles the film in more serious ways. My Old School” is too fascinated by its subject to properly question him, and occasionally goes so far as to perpetuate his actions. It would be harsh to spoil the film’s central twist — though McLeod foreshadows it to death in the first act — but it’s safe to say that it involves some seriously questionable behavior on the part of Lee, particularly toward his female classmates. And yet Lee expresses a disturbing lack of remorse for his actions and outright misogynistic beliefs, and the film is content to let him justify them, even showcasing the positive impact he had on other kids. In one particularly unsavory sequence, the filmmakers ask a female classmate of Lee’s to relive an act of deception (that some might call a kind of sexual assault) on camera, just for the sake of shock value.

Maybe for McLeod, Lee’s actions were all borne of harmless eccentricity — he’s certainly got the cartoon montages, hokey schoolroom interview setups and bouncy soundtrack to prove it. But by refusing to go deeper on an undeniably sinister subject, McLeod turns his pet project into a shallow, forgettable lark. Like a poorly-researched presentation glued to the finest poster board and surrounded by glitter and shiny stickers, “My Old School” is easy enough on the eyes, but it’s hardly done the work necessary to earn top marks. [C-]

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