Don's Plum (2001)

Simply A Masterpiece

Memorable, crazy movie

Good movie but grossly overrated

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

I loved watching these people and the power dynamics created by a group of immature dude friends who bring a new 'date' every Saturday night to the same diner to eat cold fries, drink bad coffee, and talk smack. The girls are temporary fixtures in their world of male aggression and slacker love. How they go along with the jokes, abuse, hugs, and bonding makes for an ever changing landscape of desire and disgust. The group is always right, until one of them tries to assert their independence and momentarily offers a different opinion, and then they in turn become isolated from the others. The alliances shift throughout the film, though the one constant is being alone in a crowd. Although the film is mostly eight kids sitting around a large booth talking, a few detours have the group interact with a lone diner they taunt who just wants to be ignored, a self-loathing waitress who puts on an act as a people-pleaser, a couple of drug fiends who bully their way into handouts, and a sexed up producer lady who makes movies and makes out. The audience makes out pretty well too.

In spite of everything that has been said about this movie Don's Plum is not terrible. It is probably one of the most notorious unreleased movies ever made simply because of Leo and Tobey Maguire trying to block it and to be quite honest, I have no idea why and this is after watching it from start to finish in it's entirety.The plot, many friends try to get dates where they go to this hangout place at a diner, they talk about sex, drugs and all other kinds of stuff. There really isn't all that much else to say about the plot mainly because this movie is minimalist, the only other thing of note is that it sometimes cuts to a character's internal thoughts which is them talking in a bathroom mirror with scratchy audio.Okay, I'll say all the things I found wrong with this movie. Some stuff is really speratic and right the hell out of nowhere. One of the character's close to final notes is an internal thought described above where she was molested as a kid... That's not the kind of stuff to just bring up and throw away. It also makes out in the opening that Amber Benson is the lead when she's not. After trashing a car a half hour in we never see her again. Tobey Maguire has some really awkward line deliveries (although, why he sees this as more embarrassing than the dancing in Spiderman 3?... I have no clue) And at the end I feel as though in spite of the character insight nothing really was accomplished, like this is how these kids spend every Saturday night. That could work if it was a short movie but it's not.Okay now to address the elephant in the room. There are many stories to suggest why this movie was never released and to be quite honest I can debunk so many of them. It was claimed Leo had a nude scene and claimed he was bisexual in this movie. Is Scott Bloom really the spitting image of Leo that you can't tell the difference? It was also claimed that it would ruin Maguire and Leo's image at the time, well today Leo has an Oscar and played FAR more unpleasant characters than some misogynistic prick that spends the entire movie putting people down (so I wouldn't think if released today it would harm his image) and with Maguire, he's usually a peacekeeper in those situations, as I may have said he's a little awkward - sure but I think that's deliberate. So I honestly don't know why they don't release it now because problems aside it can be pretty interesting to watch even without the crap in this paragraph.Okay, the good things. Well the acting from all involved is pretty good and while I know it was mostly improvised I feel as though it did come across pretty damn good. I get the story is trying to be this deconstruction of the characters and their relationships with one another and while as I said that was rushed that idea is pretty intriguing. While it's also in black and white the cinematography at times can be really good.So if you want me to be honest, had this been released properly I probably wouldn't have watched it but I'm glad I did mainly because of the stuff I've said above. To be quite honest if you're looking for reasons why this is the most personally despised film of Leo and Maguire's respective careers I personally think it's a head-scratcher. It's just a minimalist drama that seemed to be doing what Clerks did but instead got a lot of flak from either the media's coverage of the lawsuit or word of mouth from those events. If you can find a copy, if ANYTHING of what I've described above is your thing, while the characters aren't really likable I'd suggest watching it.

When I rented this film, I was not aware that it was hard to get. I thought it hadn't released in the cinema in Belgium because it was too dark and had simple ended up in a dim corner of the rental place. I didn't have too high expectations. Afterwards I checked for user comments here and felt people were being a bit too harsh. It is true that impact is a little bit lost sometimes because it's hard to relate with the characters. It's hard to admit for anyone that they've asked out a 'friend' sometimes just for accompaniment and self-gratification like the characters seem to do in this film. But I'm a 100 % sure that everyone has done it at least once in their life. This film is hard to watch cause it takes this very aspect of relationships and puts in under a magnifying glass. I even had to interrupt watching it, cause the brutality was making me nervous. I think the film is good in the way that it had it's desired effect. It's not your cup of tea if you want to watch something entertaining, something fun with your friends. Acting is very interesting. Because it mainly plays in the same room and the film is in black and white attention is focused on the words, and even more on the gestures and facial expressions of the characters. It's worth watching if you want to watch something that's not main stream. I hope I've helped constructing the right expectations for this film.

Rather dull film overall. It was a stretch to turn this short shot in 1996 into a feature length film, but still interesting to see some of Hollywood's hot young stars improvising in low budget cinema before they were the mega stars that they are today (notably leo pre titanic and toby pre spiderman).