Jay Baruchel ("How to Train Your Dragon," "She's Out of My League" and "Tropic Thunder") plays a high-school student named Leon who is barking mad. To the consternation of his exasperated parents, he insists that he is the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky, the notorious Communist who was a leader of the Russian Revolution in 1917.
His first attempt at a summer job fails abysmally because he tries to organize the workers into a labor union, at his father's business! His activism causes enough trouble at school that his parents, in an attempt to punish him, condemn him to a (gasp!) PUBLIC SCHOOL for his next year of high school. Undaunted, he forges ahead, trying to create a Student Union that is a real union of students, complete with demands of the faculty. Of course his main challenge is the apathy of his classmates.
Given today's economic climate, his anti-business/anti-bankers rants actually garnered a spattering of applause in the 2010 Seattle International Film Festival audience. It is fun to see a comedy that isn't about T & A, but instead about a youthful psyche groping with some serious philosophies.
Posts
