Movie review: ‘The Trotsky’
As funny as an ax to the head, the Canadian comedy “The Trotsky” rolls through its brash, too-clever take on high school outsiderdom — a 17-year-old Montrealite (Jay Baruchel) who believes he’s the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky — with a revolutionary’s exasperating confidence. In bespectacled, history-emboldened Leon Bronstein’s organizing against his capitalist father (Saul Rubinek), aggressively courting an Alexandra (Emily Hampshire) he claims will be his future wife, and leading the charge against fascism at his school, writer-director Jacob Tierney believes he’s found the ultimate nerd antihero: a socialist networker.
But Baruchel’s struggle to control the means of producing a lovable pest is for naught. He’s normally winning with teen angst (TV’s “Undeclared”), but his Leon comes off as unstable and obnoxious, a fully formed nut from Minute One (whose reference points are inevitably beyond the politically aware grasp of the movie’s target audience). That leaves the movie unconvincingly portraying everyone else — including a once idealistic civil rights lawyer (Michael Murphy) — as charmed by the stammering fanatacist in their midst, and it’s here where Tierney’s pseudo-intellectual fantasy grates most.
With nothing at stake but an attention junkie’s own warped sense of destiny, “The Trotsky” is so unintentionally cynical — without the comfort of genuine laughs — that it’s dispiriting.
Only good movies
Get the Indie Focus newsletter, Mark Olsen's weekly guide to the world of cinema.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
