A Boy, a Girl (and a Hare-Brained Roadtrip to Avenge Some Wrongs)... (Wayne REVIEW)
You know how “there’s a fine line between [blank] and [blank]” (insert whatever you’re comparing, here)? Well, for me, there’s a mighty fine line between the right amount of over-the-top whatever, and going so far over that something that the point ends up being lost in a sea of so much stupidity (confusion, disbelief, etc).
[Now is when (you either skip this aside down Memory Lane, or stick with me for a hot minute) I should prolly mention that there was actually one other thing in the ad that grabbed me, even before I saw the blurb listing the crazypants creative team behind Wayne: to wit, one sweet-ass 1979 Trans Am (albeit in one of my least-fave T.A. colors, ever—gold, yuck, but still..!). You just don’t see one of those everyday… nor did you, even about a million years ago (fine, I exaggerate), when I bought my first (very, very used) car, a gorgeous ’79 T.A., in Nocturne Blue.]
But back to Wayne… an early scene of which gives us Wayne, in a nutshell: a 16-year-old kid—an underachiever, a “weirdo”, mostly-shunned (or mocked) at school—who walks up to a group of boys hanging out, and throws a big chunk of icy snow through a window behind them, breaking the glass. Why? So someone (the shop owner, and dad to one of the boys, in this case) will come out and beat the ever-lovin’ crap out of him.
Yep, that’s Wayne, for you. Kinda different, that kid.
Before long we have enough backstory to get a handle on his (seeming) death wish, though. Things aren't exactly rosy in Wayne’s world: life in hardscrabble, lower-working-class Brockton, MA feels like a cheap ticket to nowhere; his mom is long-gone (as in, couldn’t handle being saddled with a kid, so up and skedaddled); his dad is slowly dying (from a cancer caused by his old workplace); and Wayne, well… he’s just trying to make some sense of it all (and evading the landlord, who keeps trying to collect back rents).
When—while making guy-smalltalk in his dad’s room one day (and really, who knows WTH to talk about, with someone who's dying??)—he spots an old snapshot of a muscle car and latches onto it, as something that seems interesting (and like anything but run-of-the-mill deathbed talk), and his dad, of course, is relieved to oblige.
Turns out the Trans Am in the photo used to belong to his dad… until some other fella stole it from him, and the car—with Wayne’s mom inside—hied off (for sunny Florida), never to return. Oh, and the photo? It’s one of several which Mom (and her douchebag fella) have sent Dad, over the intervening years, rubbing his face in the fact that he’d lost.
And then, Dad dies. Like, right after that big ol’ revelation... which should be all the explanation needed for why the finding (and commandeering) of said car—TO AVENGE HIS DEAD FATHER—becomes Wayne’s new purpose in life. (At least it makes a better mission than picking fights with other boys just so he can get beat up.)
Grabbing his dad’s old motorbike, he makes a pitstop to collect Del, who he’s known for all of about a hot minute (trying to sell him Girl Scout cookies she’d nicked)—a girl he’s pretty sure he wants to be his girlfriend (but being 16 and having absolutely ZERO game, that’s about as far as he’s gotten with the concept)—and having no idea exactly how to get to Florida (aside from, “go south”), or how to find Mom once they get there. (Details, schmetails…)
From that point on, Wayne becomes a road trip… not just for Wayne and his (reluctant) Girl Friday, Del, but for the high school principal and Wayne’s best (okay, and only) friend, Orlando, who team up, vowing to rescue Wayne (from his own bad ideas, basically); for the pair of Brockton police working the case, who—in a neat turn!—aren’t exactly not on Wayne’s side; and for Del’s redneck daddy and her moronic older brothers, none of whom actually seem to like Del, but who certainly don’t want anyone else to like (or have) her, either.
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Wayne is a wild, wacky ride… one unlike any I’ve ever seen, before. It’s bonkers—and often, über-violent. It’s frequently hilarious, even as it's cringe-worthy. It embraces scads of stereotypes like they’re long-lost pals. Notions of right and wrong are a little off-center, to put it mildly. (Remember that Deadpool mention earlier? Okay then, ‘nuff said.) Yet at the center of everything, always, is a beating heart… not a mushy, sappy one (as if), but a tentative, skittish, scarred one that’s been through the wringer and isn’t sure if it even has the right to hope for any damn thing… but can’t stop itself from doing so, just in case.
Many times I found myself comparing Wayne to one of my favorite movie characters, ever: Lloyd Dobler, from Cameron Crowe’s 1989 film, Say Anything. Lloyd, if you recall (and if you don’t, I cannot recommend the film to you highly enough), was another lower-class, parent-less, underachiever, who—while being better-liked than Wayne—was still fairly radical for the time (he wanted to be a professional kickboxer, after all), and who made it his mission to win the sweet girl he was crazy about, despite the odds. Why? Because he was just a regular, hapless guy, with a huge heart… who believed in hope, in his dreams, in family, and that nothing is more important than love. [I wonder, if Say Anything had been made today, if Lloyd might’ve had harder edges, and been more like Wayne…]
For now, there’s only the one season of Wayne, but if it does well enough on Amazon Prime, a second season seems like a strong possibility. There’s a lot more story that creator Shawn Simmons and his team could tell; here’s hoping they get the chance to do so.
~GlamKitty
[Note: I actually raced through Wayne more than a month ago, now—starting, but never getting around to finishing, this review, then—but it made the kind of impact I won’t soon forget. :)]
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