Dollar Tree Cinema: The Sneak Over

 

“The Sneak Over” (2020)
Starring Reed Taylor, Katie Burgess, Will Hyde, Max Purget, Bryton Snyder, Connie Franklin
Written and Directed by Brandon Bergin
Not rated, but PG-ish with crude, very juvenile humor

With its young cast, plot centered around a VHS tape and distinctive font on the box (and that $1 price tag), I thought “The Sneak Over” would be an ideal tie-in with the new season of “Stranger Things” debuting Friday.

Well... the font is dead-on. (On the box. No sign of it in the movie.)

Despite the central importance of that tape – an unreleased superhero movie called “The Blue Shadow” – this isn't a period piece but set in the present day. And there are no supernatural elements, unless you count the one kid's immensely powerful and omnipresent farting.

If I had to sum up this movie in one word, it would be farting. Fortunately, I have more. But a lot of them will still be flatulence-adjacent.

Set in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where it was filmed, the movie ostensibly centers around Henry Hudson (Taylor), an awkward youngster looking to make friends before the start of fifth grade. His ace in the hole is the tape of “The Blue Shadow” he borrowed, sans permission, from his film collector dad's movie room in the opening sequence before heading back to his mom's.

There he goes to a sleepover, to which he was only invited because he had the movie. Henry hopes it will ingratiate him to the kids of the Mingo Valley Film Club and earn him a nickname like its members: Stats (Purget), who likes to quote percentages; Chip (Hyde), who is the friendliest of the bunch; and Stink (Snyder), who breaks wind at a level no ordinary human could possibly sustain.

Things go awry when Henry realizes he left the tape in his VCR at home and his mom has gone out of town. Stats' sister, Ashley (Burgess), aka Dream Girl, is reluctantly babysitting and declines to drive to Henry's place to get the movie, so the boys hatch a plot to sneak out. This involves recording audio to convince her they're watching the movie (that she knows they don't have) and a lot of fart sounds, which, I can attest, kids that age would find disproportionately hilarious.

With Stats left behind to distract his sister and her not-quite-boyfriend, Henry, Chip and Stink set out on their quest. Standing in their way are Henry's lack of a house key or memory of the garage door code and the neighborhood bullies the McGuffin brothers (really).

The kids face various challenges and mishaps along their trek, often involving Stink cutting the cheese. There are some tense, exciting moments, or so we're told by the narrator and shown in a host of animated, comic-style drawings by illustrator Courtney Counts. I haven't been this surprised by the comics-related content of a movie since “Unbreakable,” but these illustrations aren't just a clever device or effect. Any time anything vaguely resembling action starts to happen, it cuts to animation.

The exception is one sequence in which Henry is running from the bullies and climbing fences and we see mainly his lower legs and tennis shoes. I wondered to myself if they could only afford one stunt double. Turns out there was only one stunt double credited, although their name was preceded in the credits by all the Kickstarter backers.

I don't want to be too hard on this movie because the filmmakers' hearts were in the right place. They were trying to make a family friendly movie (a “fragrant family film,” according to the Kickstarter page, but still). There's no cursing or sex or non-bodily function vulgarity (sometimes they mix it up with talk of burping or snot). The concept harkens back to the tone of kid-venture movies like “The Sandlot” or even the early parts of “The Goonies.”

But the quality is lacking. There are continuity lapses. A lot of the dialogue is delivered rather stiffly, and not just by the youngest actors. Henry's breaking of the fourth wall is fine, but soon, just about every character addresses the audience at some point, including Stats' dad, Mr. Blevins.

(I only know that's his name because Stats' mom is listed as Mrs. Blevins and played by Connie Franklin. As a beautiful woman who is more excited about the superhero movie her son and his friends are watching than her husband's boring-sounding social gathering, she was the Dream Girl for me in this flick. I kind of want to see the evening from her perspective, struggling through a dull party and wondering if “The Blue Shadow” is as good as the rumors say. #ReleaseTheStatsMomCut)

While Henry is the main character, just about every comedically dramatic moment of the movie hinges on Stink's, er, talent. Or is it a curse?

That's not to say there aren't funny moments. And Burgess certainly has talent that can translate to a higher level.

Despite its flaws, some kids might enjoy “The Sneak Over.” Stranger things have happened.