YOU SHALL NOT PASS...unless...ya know...ya pay the dollar ya owe...
PG-13
A bunch of parking lot attendants.
Tyler: To work there, you have to have a certain disregard for the people because otherwise you could fixate on the fact that, UVA being a fairly good school, you have to imagine that maybe 80% of those people will graduate…and all the people who graduate, for the most part, are going to make more money in a year than I will in my entire life. Not only that, many of them are going to be sending MY children to wars on other planets. And not only THAT, but they all just vomited on a Buick.
A documentary looking at the lives of a group of parking lot attendants working at a small parking lot in Virginia.
It’s amazing, the places you can find interesting people and interesting stories. You just have to look for them. I’m not sure if director Meghan Eckman went looking for this story though. My guess is that in her time studying at UVA, she either parked in this lot on more than one occasion or just met some of the guys who work there. Heck, she could have been taught by one or more of them, considering the fact that some of these guys were instructors at the university.
That’s one of the interesting things about the group of attendants we meet in the movie. The jobs many of them had before they worked there and the jobs they have after working there make the choice to work there a strange one. They freely point out that most of them are over-educated/overqualified to be sitting around in a parking lot all day, but for some reason they were all drawn to the job.
Even though these guys are generally bitter and hate everyone that parks there (and freely admit it), they’re still an amusing bunch. Their humorous and philosophical comments are the main entertainments to be found here. Let’s face it, the subject matter is not exactly deep, inspiring, and moving. In fact, after a while, I started realizing that it seemed like 30 minutes of subject matter was being stretched out over an hour and 10 minutes. “Okay, I get it, they hate everyone, don’t know exactly why they work there, but still love it,” I might have been heard to say…to no one in particular…since I watched this movie by myself.
That’s not to say I was bored exactly. The amusing comments and arguments caught on camera were entertaining enough. It just never seemed to be going anywhere. Though, I guess that’s to be expected in a parking lot.
Pay the stupid 50 cents, people, sheesh…
10 – 1 because it wasn’t the most deep, moving, interesting subject matter in the world – 1.5 for seeming overlong and getting repetitive = 7.5
The Robot Who Likes Pretty Things 