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Film

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Tracking Shots

Flakes

by Julia Wallace

December 11th, 2007 12:00 AM

Flakes
Directed by Michael Lehmann
IFC First Take
IFC Center, opens December 19

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Flakes, the eponymous star of the movie Flakes, is actually an aggressively cool New Orleans cereal café. Yup, that's right . . . it sells breakfast cereal and only breakfast cereal to a group of cereal-obsessed hipsters. Neal (Aaron Stanford) manages the place and plays in a rock band on the side. His girlfriend, Miss Pussy Katz (Zooey Deschanel), wants him to get out of the cereal business for good and devote himself to his art. So when a mean old capitalist opens a rival café across the street, Pussy joins up with him to help put Flakes out of business and get her man back with his band. If this all sounds impossibly flimsy, that's because it is. Despite a few good one-liners, the dialogue is overwritten, and director Michael Lehmann (Heathers, The Truth About Cats & Dogs) is in thrall with the hipness he tries to chronicle. There's something eerily prelapsarian about the whole production: The Cereal Wars seem to be taking place not only before Katrina, but before the Internet age, in a world where flannel shirts are still the pinnacle of cool. It's a wonder we don't hear anyone ask, "What's your damage?"

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