MAGNETOSPHERE
(Check out Chris Reeds’s Magnetosphere movie review, it’s on VOD now. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
In her second feature, Magnetosphere, writer-director Nicola Rose (Goodbye, Petrushka) explores the awkwardness of youth and difference in a refreshingly novel way. Her 13-year-old protagonist, Maggie (Shayelin Martin), sees and hears the world in vivid, living colors, setting her apart from her peers at the most depressingly conformist of ages. On top of that, her family has just moved across Canada to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, making her the new kid in school. “Everything sucks,” she finger-writes (with many exclamation points) across the sky. It sure looks like it does.
Rose begins the movie with bright and bouncy animated titles, and tells her story with much tomfoolery and many jokes, in playful opposition to Maggie’s dour mood. Sometimes it’s a bit much, and not all the performances land with equal effectiveness. But the charming approach to the potentially fraught material ultimately wins the cinematic day.
Maggie earns her titular nickname (among many that begin with “M”) from Travis (Steven He), an actor in her father’s local stage production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance on whom she has a crush. He’s a grad student in astronomy, and when he tells Maggie that a magnetosphere is “”a celestial body with an active interior dynamo,” she is completely won over (well, she already liked him, but this seals the deal).
Maggie’s family is a happy and loving one. In addition to her goofy theater-director father (Patrick McKenna), there’s her college-professor mother (Tania Webb) and younger sister (Zooey Schneider). Both parents are sweet, if at times ineffective in dealing with their eldest daughter’s social unease. Fortunately, Maggie eventually makes a friend in her class, Wendy (Mikayla Kong), though she annoys her by talking about Travis all the time.
The movie revels in its silliness, a technique which lightens what could become a hackneyed narrative about a teenage fish out of water. Instead, Rose introduces characters like Gil (Colin Mochrie), a handyman who is anything but, well, handy (though he sure can sing), doing everything wrong as he attempts to solve problems (but everything right when it comes to brightening the atmosphere). Even when Maggie is in the dumps, we never worry that things will take a turn for the dire.
In lieu of tragedy, Rose offers a lovely reveal of Maggie’s long-suppressed abilities. Bullies get their due, good people succeed, and everyone learns important lessons. For people who like blooper reels (me, not so much), there’s even one at the end for those folks. It’s good times all around, coming-of-age as it always should be.
– Christopher Llewellyn Reed (@ChrisReedFilm)
Nicola Rose; Magnetosphere movie review
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