There has been a trend of late within documentary films to heavily feature clips, often to make a point about the feature films discussed and, indeed, cinema in general. Documentary films such as Room 237, Los Angeles Plays Itself and This Film Is Not Yet Rated use clips to dissect various elements of movies that the casual viewer may accept at face value.
Tony Rizzo's Seduction Of The Wonder Dick takes this use of re-contextualization to its extreme and, perhaps, to its natural conclusion. Consisting of Mr. Rizzo's home movies cut together with a dizzying variety of clips from Hollywood films (most of them based upon comic books with a particular focus on the character Batman), Seduction seems at first to be a fairly standard piece of feature length film criticism. In its first few minutes, it features a clip of Halloween III, in which a child is killed by the program he is watching, upon which Mr. Rizzo places audio of filmmaker Joel Schumacher apologizing for his much despised film Batman & Robin, symbolizing both the temporary killing of the Batman franchise and the death, perhaps, of many viewers' love of the character. Several comedic and dramatic juxtapositions of a variety of video and audio clips follow.
As the film goes on, though, it becomes clear that there is more going on here, that this is quite a personal story. It is difficult to describe this film without entirely spoiling it, but it soon goes beyond the world of documentary and into the world of psychological thriller. This film is often quite funny and always quite unusual. The audience with whom I viewed it seemed quite divided on whether it was a mere stunt or an actual great work. I highly recommend one and all judge for themselves.
****
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