For myself, the 2002 Hawaii International Film Festival got off to a dubious start with "Hawaii Panorama 7," a collection of films with Hawaii ties. While this wasn't the festival's opening attraction ("YMCA Baseball Team" was), Panorama 7 was one of the first of the festival's screenings. Let's just hope the rest of the week gets better.

Three short films ("The Procrastinators," "The Message," and "Silent Love") as well as a main feature, "Bench Warmers" were screened, and none of them impressed.

"The Procrastinators" starred brothers Andy and Ray Bumatai as bad-ass bikers cruising through scenic Oahu. Gorgeously shot on 35mm, the locations were breathtaking, and the production values high. But the "joke," centering on a clueless and distracted narrator describing his two cool easy riders, wears thin over the the film's eight minutes.

"The Message" is a take on the old "telephone line" bit where a sender's message eventually gets distorted by the time it reaches the receiver. A slight and well-intentioned short that misses the mark.

"Silent Love" is a one-note joke about a man madly in love with his mime girlfriend. It's funny, but for only a quarter of its ten minute running time.

Funny for none of its entire ninety-minute length is the main feature, "Bench Warmers." One of the things it lacked was sympathetic characters; there was no one to identify with and almost all of them were fairly stupid. As a matter of fact, a lot of the movie was stupid.

So stupid that my fiancee and I walked out three quarters in, leaving whatever ending or closure its stupid characters inevitably get a mystery both of us are happy to leave unsolved.

We both gave "Bench Warmers" more than enough chances to redeem itself, and for a stretch of the film's running time, we stayed out of respect for the filmmakers who were present at the showing.

But being disrespected at every turn by a movie that had no respect for its audience got tiring after a while.

Hey, life's too short, you know?

Tomorrow: "Sister Helen" and "Better Luck Tomorrow." 

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