Art Car: The Movie

A fun, feel good film about a little known piece of Americana.
An insider look at one of those uniquely American forms of sub-cultural art and the genuine characters who shape and mold its existence. Art Car is more of a film that examines the individual component of an offbeat art movement than a strict expose on the mechanics of medium. Art Car follows the story of Rebecca Bass, a charming teacher who motivates her students to participate in Houston's annual Art Car Parade. The filmmakers use her story as a centerpiece to the story of Art Car, and branch out to examine both the history and future of Art Car community. The film spends an adequate amount of time tracing the history of the movement, paying close attention to those hard to categorize moments that occur in Art Car's early stages. Bass, like many of the other artists in the film, becomes the real focus of the story. These quirky, kind-hearted groups of artists are the types of characters we want to find in the pockets of American society. People who seem to have found a way to live...

Art Car: The Movie
Finally the "art car" phenomena is explained from the indiviual interest to the fraternity of contributors. Most amazing is the use of the art car as a teaching tool. Rebecca Bass taps into her students talents. This is a great effort in production of a story within a story.

giant sigh
The subject matter of this movie was so interesting, this movie however, was not. The filmmakers use the same sound bites from interviews over and over again. Dan Aykroyd is in the film for about 30 seconds (he is the grand marshal for the art car parade). There are a lot of neat art cars in the film, I would much rather know about them, how they were built, considerations when building an art car, the people who build them, than the sort of half-assed nonsensical story of a high school class building an art car. To clarify, the class's story was compelling, interesting, all that jazz, just SO poorly told... When you first see them they are throwing out ideas six months before the competition, next time you see them they're building the car. There is no explanation of how they arrived at their theme, designed the car, etc. This film tried to do too much (maybe?) and ended up not doing anything well.

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