We Are Wizards: An Endearing Mess

After I wrote my last post I did a bit of Internet searching. You know I wasn't a big fan of Nerdcore Rising so I really just wanted to see how the movie was received by the world at large (or, at least, the two other people who actually saw it). So, okay, I just wanted some validation, but don't we all? Anyway, the point of this story is that in the process of reading up on Nerdcore Rising, I read about this other movie called We Are Wizards. Wizards is a documentary from the same year that, like Nerdcore, deals with topics such as fandom and fan art. Whereas Nerdcore focused on a small group of guys chasing their geeky dreams, Wizards is much more broad in scope.

That's kind of being nice. Honestly, Wizards is so broad in scope that it ends up being a bit of a pointless mess. To be fair, it's a rather entertaining mess, but it's still a mess nonetheless. Basically We Are Wizards is a broad 77-minute (or so) examination of the wild world of Harry Potter fandom. Anybody who knows anything about those crazy HP kids knows that this is a rich subject for examination. Like Star Wars, Harry Potter's a cultural phenomenon that appeals to everybody from the most devout freakshow diehards to the casual admirers. This fan diversity ultimately hurts the film though, as it follows a lot of people and says a lot of things without ever making any kind of worthwhile statement.

An example of the film's schizophrenic personality: the movie opens with a voiceover by a Christian "documentary filmmaker" (I put this in quotes because, let's be honest, this woman doesn't exactly ooze credibility) explaining the dangers of Harry Potter. She goes into the standard bit about YA lit secretly being occultist propaganda and all that bullshit that publicity hungry Christians peddle. My problem with her inclusion in the movie is that, right after her intro, the movie drops her like a hot potato and doesn't come back to her or address her contrary point of view 'til a good fifty-minutes later. Why? If you're willing to say something new or interesting about the religious controversy surrounding the Potter franchise, then by all means dive in, but don't waste my time if you have new ground to cover or aren't willing to spend enough time on the matter to develop interesting questions.

I'm picking on the Christian lady just because the whole religious people who oppose Harry Potter thing has been so talked about to death that it's barely even any fun to mock them anymore. But just 'cause I'm picking on Sister Christian doesn't mean that there aren't other parts of the movie's structure that I had major problems with. As evidenced by the whole religious thing, We Are Wizards tends to ask interesting questions and then proceed to to ignore them. One sizable chunk of the movie deals with a group of fans boycotting Harry Potter film merchandise after a few teenage Harry Potter website owners received cease and desist letters from Warner Bros. This could have opened up an interesting discussion of copyright laws in the Internet age, but instead the movie moves away from this issue to focus cute, but uber-fluffy footage of elementary school age children singing "wizard rock" songs onstage.

To be fair the film's not all disappointment and wasted potential. I genuinely liked most of the fans that were interviewed. There's a diverse cast of characters here, but most of them seemed very human and sincere. Some of my favorites were the artsy parents whose young boys (and I do indeed mean young, as in one is four-years old) are in a band that sings Harry Potter rock songs on stage in front of sizable crowds of fans. These parents were endearing in their hippie-ish take on childcare. They bought cheap guitars and laid them around the house in an attempt to get their kids to pick up and play and to live creative lives. It's an eccentric parenting style, but an endearing and well-intentioned one as well. And even I gotta admit that their kids were pretty darn kawaii.

We Are Wizards admittedly does manage to capture a bit of that pure blast of joy that comes from being young and infatuated with a particular fandom. However it never sustains this feeling, or really any other concrete feeling, throughout the entirety of its 77 minute runtime. Wizards is the kind of movie that would work better as a series of interviews on Youtube than as a feature length documentary.