After bypassing this movie time and time again, I finally decided to give it a shot. For some reason, the guy on the cover reminded me of David Spade, which generally isn't a good thing. But nobody I know has seen Danny Deckchair, and I've yet to come accross a review that's actually helpful in telling us what it's really about. After watching Danny Deckchair, I'm wondering why, as it's not that complicated of a movie. It's still a cute one to watch with your significant other, as it has "date movie" written all over it, even if it is "just an indie movie". Don't go into this expecting low budgets and bad acting, as it doesn't have either. The budget's solid for the type of movie it is, and all of the actors are unique and do their parts well.



Danny Deckchair is the story of a guy named Danny. He's your average joe who works as a construction worker, but this past week, he's had the tendency to fall into wet cement while on the job. Why? Because he's thinking about his upcoming vacation- traveling via plane to go camping. Yes, it doesn't make much sense upon first thought, as when you travel you stay in hotels, but Danny's the type of lax guy that doesn't mind. When off of work, he bumps into an old friend from highschool at a party favor store. The guy now owns his own used car lot, but is complaining about how the balloons he ordered have his name spelled incorrectly. With that, he gives Danny one of said balloons (yes, I'm getting somewhere with this plot summary. Gimme a minute). Danny takes it home, finds out that his girlfriend can't come with him during his vacation, and pratically spends his vacation at home. But he soon looks for things to do, most of which are zany things like explore the attic and such. But after finding out that he's been lied to by a friend and his own girlfriend, who was seen with a local news caster, Danny loses general interest with everything. At a BBQ that he didn't really want to throw, he starts tying balloons to a deckchair after filling them up with helium that he bought. One after the other, he sees if he'll actually be lifted into the air. And you know what? He does. Danny floats off, grasping to the deckchair's arm rests, as that's all he can hold onto. His girlfriend and friends panic, naturally, and try to follow him, but he's soon lost. Thanks to a firework, Danny's little flight is halted, and he lands in a completely different town, miles away from his. But this is a town he can really fit into. Everyone's nice for the most part, people listen to his ideas, he helps a woman start to enjoy her life, and more. But her ex-boyfriend is jealous of Danny, and tries to screw things up for them. At the same time, Danny's former life is catching up to him, and he'll soon have to deal with it in front of his new townsfolk.



I bet you already know what's going to happen. Yes, the plot's predictable and been done thousands of times before, but Danny's a great guy. He doesn't have a tragic past that made him laid back about everything, and none of the other characters have some dark secret. This is a straight-up feel good movie, nothing more and nothing less. And it goes by pretty fast. 20 minutes into the movie, Danny takes off and starts his new life. We cut between his new girlfriend and the old one, seeing what everyone's doing to track him down while he's enjoying life with people who can appreciate him. And I think we've all wished for something like that at least once in our lives, haven't we? To just go off without warning and end up in what would appear to be paradise. There's nothing bad I can say about this movie when I think about it. It doesn't drag on, the music's nice, the characters have a genuine feel to them, and it makes you want to go out and try new things. Though this has been done before, it's nice to get a movie like this in an age dominated by CG car chases, Matrix rip-offs, and horror movies that horrify me everytime I see a preview for another one. At least give Danny Deckchair a shot if you want something sweet. It's a simple movie, plain and simple.



The picture quality is what I expected for an independent movie. There's some grain that appears in outdoor scenes, and some indoor ones seem a bit faded. The election hall scenes in particular. But the movie has a warm tone to it, and that's shown by the colors they used in the movie. Aside from very few night scenes, everything else is during the daytime. As for the audio, this is going to make me sound dumb, but some actors have a thick Australian accent, and it sounded muted sometimes. Sometimes I'd have to go back and put captions on for a scene I just watched so I could understand one whole two-word sentence someone said. Sharper audio would've been nice, but it's no big deal. You can hear all the main points easily.



The special features are disappointing. The commentary tack is with the director and Rhys Ifans, the guy who plays Danny. While they talk a lot and rarely interrupt eachother, they don't really tell us that much. Sometimes they'll spoonfeed us the plot while other times they talk about something from their personal lives. It got boring fast, and I had to take a break from it 1/3 through. The interesting things they tell us are too few and far between, though it's cute to hear that the director met his wife on the set of Operation Dumbo Drop. Oh yes I did just bring up that god forsaken movie. Next is a quick behind the scenes featurette that runs about 18 minutes. It's more of a plot summary than anything, telling us about what Danny does and how he ends up in the new town (like we couldn't tell just looking at the movie's box). We get some small tidbits on other actors though, which I guess counts as a mini-bio of some sort, and we also see how they made the deckchair look like it really was floating away in the first few scenes. An industrial sized crane lifted that sucker a good 800 feet in the air. Incredible, ain't it? Aside from those two extras are the obligatory trailer gallery and trailer for the movie. I expected deleted scenes after the director mentions that there were a few in the commentary track. That's just lazy to not include them here.



I can't stop repeating myself- Danny Deckchair is a cute movie. Nothing special or life-changing, but it's worth watching at least once.