Cardboard Titanics: Smart People Being Stupid
by Anastasia Bogomolov
On the surface, CARDBOARD TITANICS: SMART PEOPLE BEING STUPID, directed by Sam Frazier Jr., is a short documentary about your everyday group of fun-loving people partaking in something silly for no exceptional reason other than to have a grand-ole-time. But look a little deeper, and you’ll surely unearth a wink of the humane revealed through our longing to bestow some sort of actionable meaning to our random ideas, and to partake in a childhood fantasy of living life for the simplicity of unadulterated amusement. And given that we’ve all experienced our share of the “what if…” line of thinking, a wacky film that takes the viewer and its cast of goofballs on a foreseeably swift race in nothing but cardboard and duct tape (these are the only rules) is bound to give life to one’s sporadic whims of imagination.
CARDBOARD TITANICS: SMART PEOPLE BEING STUPID pretty much embodies its title: seemingly not stupid folks race in self-made cardboard boats around the bend of some body of water. As images of historically great achievements sprawl the opener, a Morgan Freeman-like voice concludes, “in a world dominated by collegiate professionals with great big fat asses sitting around talking to each other, one man brings the cardboard boat race to Birmingham, Alabama, and in so doing, puts the amateur back in amateur sports.” Funny. The short, preparing us for zany bedlam, introduces us to our contenders and their always odd yet creative cardboard boats to the tune of the Mission Impossible theme. The details of participant 1, for instance, script out as follows:
Contest # 1: Titanic II
Strengths: Shaped roughly like a boat
Weaknesses: Inauspicious choice of name
Odds of finishing race: 50%
The use of continued humor adds a refreshing slice of connectivity to a film that doesn’t aim to take anything seriously. And the colorful cast of giddily tenacious personalities, proud of even an award for D.F.L (dead f-bomb last), make this film a success of its own consistently meaningless jumble of meaningful fun. While I wouldn’t mind getting to know a little more about these people – especially the organizer – and some of the thought processes leading to up to establishing the event – tossing more material into this very short, short, could’ve been overkill. At the same time, a little more substance couldn’t hurt either. Go figure. Piecing it all together, the film makes the best with what it has. It succeeds in leaving one wanting to try something purposelessly fun for the mere reason of…why not? And that may just be reason enough.
