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Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(from the 2011 South by Southwest Film Festival)

Directed/Written by: Berndt Mader
Starring: Ryan Akin, Betty Buckley, Jon Gries, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, Justin Arnold, Jill Blackwood and Noell Coet

There’s an element of Miranda July’s filmmaking (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) in the voiceover opening of “Five Time Champion.” That’s a good thing. Worms, a make-out session and a boy lying in the middle of a dirt road playing with a rock make for an auspicious start to a feature career.

Berndt Mader won himself some fame with cinematography and an “additional writing” credit on festival favorite “Winnebago Man.” For his first feature, he’s crafted an innocent, well-balanced indie.

Julius (Ryan Akin), described as a fuse waiting to blow, is troubled by his baseball coach’s affair with his taxidermist mother and his girlfriend being brought to school on the back of another kid’s bike. He finds solace in his worms, on whom he inflicts cuts with the knowledge they’ll self-amputate without much ado, and is comforted by conversations with a brother figure in local lad Levi (Justin Arnold), whose interest in tortoises had led him to Julius’ mother. That’s when things get complicated.

Akin as Julius, Noell Coet as his first love and Dana Wheeler-Nicholson as his mother each imbue the film with a sense of subtlety and finesse. And Mader’s use of music by Austin-based composer Graham Reynolds (“A Scanner Darkly”) is a star-making move.

Unfortunately, a couple of Mader’s other supporting factors, namely Arnold as Levi and Jon Gries as Coach Melvin, are way too broad in their approach to be believable in this setting and only serve to muddy the focus of the story away from its core. Despite these distractions, one can’t help but be curious about the film and its makers but confused too as to whether their next step will be toward family-friendly films or more challenging fare.

Photo courtesy South by Southwest