Jacob Wysocki and John C. Reilly star in Azazel Jacobs’s poignant, offbeat look at the tumultuous teen years
TERRI (Azazel Jacobs, 2011)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Thursday, October 13, $10, 7:00
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
www.terri-movie.com
Azazel Jacobs follows up the widely praised Momma’s Man, in which he cast his real-life parents (experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs and painter Flo Jacobs) in a story about a married adult and new father (Matt Boren) who keeps extending a visi t to his ancestral home, with another idiosyncratic tale about growing up. Terri, adapted by Patrick deWitt from a series of his interrelated short stories, follows the trials and tribulations of the title teen, played with great subtlety by newcomer Jacob Wysocki. Terri is a grossly overweight kid who shows up late to school every morning wearing pajamas; lives with and takes care of his uncle (The Office’s Creed Bratton), who is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s; becomes obsessed with catching mice; and has a secret crush on high school cutie Heather (Olivia Crocicchia). When the vice principal, Mr. Fitzgerald (a wonderfully offbeat John C. Reilly), takes a personal interest in him, Terri is at first confused, but then seems okay with it, until he finds out that he is part of a group of deeply troubled teens that Mr. Fitzgerald meets with regularly, including such loser outcasts as Chad Markson (Bridger Zadina), who likes to pull out his own hair and say very inappropriate things at inopportune moments. They are soon joined by Heather, who was nearly expelled for allowing a boy to touch her during class and is now shunned by the cool clique. The unlikely threesome, along with Mr. Fitzgerald, who appears to mean well but can’t stop putting his foot in his mouth, exemplify the difficult teenage years as they come together, and break apart, over the course of this charming, eclectic film. As with Momma’s Man, Jacobs has faith in his narrative, eschewing grand statements and teen clichés in favor of a poignant and intelligent examination of adolescence that anyone can relate to, whether they were the teased or the teaser back in those tumultuous and torturous high school days. Terri is screening on October 13 at 7:00 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s “After Hours (Fall/Winter 2011)” series, which continues October 27 with Joe Maggio’s The Last Rites of Joe May, followed by a Pinewood Dialogue with star Dennis Farina, and November 3 with Larry Cohen’s 1977 film The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover, with Cohen in person.