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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Outside Providence, 14 Aug 2005
I'm guessing that "Outside Providence" is going to thought of a bit of a peculiarity by most that sit down to watch it.
Based on a book by Peter Farrelly and with the screenplay written by both him and his brother Bobby, any fans of the Farrelly Brothers previous offerings like "Dumb and Dumber" or "There's Something About Mary" are probably going to be disappointed with this by far more muted affair of teenage life and rites of passage.
The scenes of "gross-out" humour and generally silliness have all but been left out of this film and the tone is generally more self reflective and thoughtful.That's not to say that all the humour has been eradicated. More than once a little gem of comedy creeps in, which actually makes the film even harder to judge and classify. It's the mid 1970's and teenager Tim Dumphy lives in the small Rhode Island town of Pawtucket, there's not much to do other than hang out with his crowd of deadbeats and dopeheads, smoking, drinking and wondering "what if"
Tim lives with his rough and opinionated father and crippled younger brother. After a scrape with the law, Tim is sent to Cornwall Academy in Connecticut for his senior year with the instructions to either graduate or go to jail. As I say the film really isn't one thing or the other. It's not a true American College Brat-Frat Comedy, it's far to thoughtful for that. It's also not a proper rites of passage "Dead Poets Society" drama as there's too much triviality included. It's also not totally a teen-romance and even though Tim does meet a wonderful young lady at the college the film doesn't concentrate on this relationship totally. Because of this when a gem of humour does occur you're not quite sure if it what it seems as it's probably just followed a quite thoughtful moment. Likewise at the more poignant moments, you feel the film is belittling the situation because of something stupid that's just happened before. The cast is almost totally unknown, apart from Alec Baldwin as Tim's father and George Wendt as one of Tim's father's poker buddies, I didn't recognise any of the actors. That's not necessarily a bad thing as you at least approach the film with no expectations in this respect and I felt that most did a pretty good job. Certainly Shawn Hatosy who plays Tim is very engaging and watchable. The other thing that is well worth a mention is the fantastic 1970's soundtrack which features gems from The Who, Free, Lynard Skynyrd, Wings, Yes and ELO. Fans of quirky small films will probably enjoy this. For all others I would recommend watching it for the spaghetti trick - I'll say no more!
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