April Fool’s Day (dir. Fred Walton, 1986)
The only people who enjoy April Fools Day are small children who don’t know any better and the sociopaths. It is a terrible holiday that celebrates the worst form of humor: the practical joke. At best it embarrasses someone who takes something at face value, and at worst it’s distilled cruelty. I hate Jim Halpert from The Office for his dedication to pranks. Yes, Dwight Schrute is awful, but we all just trying to get through the goddamn day here, Jim. For Christ’s sake, the show took place during a recession. And also, you know what? Buying a house without your partner’s knowledge or consent is insane and grounds for an incontestable divorce.
Anyway, April Fool’s Day is about a bunch of assholes on an asshole island trying to outasshole each other the weekend of April 1. It’s spring break for these Vassar undergrads, and they are spending it at Muffy St. John’s island estate she’s poised to inherit. There’s also Harvey, Skip, Nan, Kit, Chaz, and Arch, who while on the ferry ride over have begun playing jokes that range from making you look to check your fly to a staged homicide with a prop switchblade. Even when a deckhand has his eye put out in an accident, they refuse to stop their insufferable japery. Only a series of murders overnight in Muffy’s mansion put a damper on it, and even then…
I know I am being harsh on the film, but that’s because I know that this film could have been better. This is as close as we’re likely to come to a Whit Stillman slasher film, and the fact that April Fool’s Day lacks his dry wit and observations on the urban haute bourgeoisie as he termed America’s most indefensible social class is such a missed opportunity. There’s also the matter of the twist ending. It’s much contested, making people either like the film or hate it. I thought it was fine, but I also went into it knowing what would happen. Your experience might be different, though.
God, now I really want to see Whit Stillman actually make The Seven Sisters of Death.
October 15, 2018
oliveresque 