Box Elder is Back at the Dobie for One Night Only

Pests. There are many different ways to explain what that word means to you, but in general it denotes a persistently annoying or destructive thing; a nuisance, a bother. Box Elder bugs are pests. In packs they are loud, ugly and destructive with no true purpose besides using their sheer numbers to suck the life from other things around them, but on their own they are benign little creatures, not capable of biting or stinging or doing much harm. In Todd Sklar's first feature length film, he explores a generation of brohams as represented by four ne'er-do-wells whose lifestyles bare a striking resemblance to those of these bugs.

For some reason, we as a culture have spawned an entire generation of college aged people who have all of the opportunity in the world, but absolutely no direction or decision making skills. The four characters in Box Elder fall into familiar archetypal roles: the ladies man, the idiotic ape, the sweet hearted romantic and the wise sage (well, as wise and sage-like as an early-to-mid-20s dude can be), but none of them are particularly noteworthy or spectacular. Think of them as Animal House meets Clerks, with even slightly less ambition. At some point they realize that they cannot continue just coasting through life, but not before many sammiches and beers are consumed and many hilarious moments brought on by everyday situations have occurred. If you are a dude, or an appreciator of dudeism, then this film is for you.

Box Elder screened at the Dobie earlier this month and received such a warm welcome that it was invited back for this extremely limited run (see headline). The filmmakers have engaged in a type of guerrilla distribution tour, eschewing the traditional route of being picked up by a studio in favor of a city-by-city release, peddling their wares in independent movie houses country-wide, throughout which they have pledged to eat even more sammiches. The last time they were in town they ate at FoodHeads, and we are hoping that people will bring their own sammiches to the screening tonight, because, A.) sammiches are delicious and B.) you are probably going to get hungry watching a three year span of deli case annihilation.