Moving Alan (2003)

Directed by: Christopher Shelton

Starring: Marley Shelton, Samantha Shelton, Misha Collins, Mark Pellegrino and Leslie Jordan

Genre: Independent, Comedy, Dark Comedy

Rated: Unrated

Emily Manning arrives at her estranged sister, Melissa’s home after an emergency phone call. Melissa’s husband is dead and she believes she’ll be blamed for killing him. Emily agrees to help Melissa hide the body, and the two embark on a journey of rediscovering their lost relationship and finding themselves.

This is definitely a strange film. I have watched it twice now, and I’m still not quite sure how I feel about it. I wanted to like the sisters, but I just couldn’t. Melissa is both incredibly selfish and helpless, and I can understand why Emily becomes so irritated with her. At the same time, Emily has been holding a grudge against Melissa for three years, and that is the reason the two haven’t spoken for so long. What is the grudge about? Melissa moving in on Alan when he was spending time with Emily and marrying him. The fact that Alan was abusive to Melissa, leaving her with a black eye and bruises up and down her back, doesn’t seem to ease this grudge Emily carries; not until Melissa’s neighbor tells her to let it go – and even then, she doesn’t let it go entirely. I was sitting there grumbling at the screen, “You were never even DATING Alan! Melissa’s moving in on him may have been a bitchy thing to do, but it’s not like you two were in a relationship! Get over it!”

It is obvious that Melissa doesn’t like the competition of her little sister when it comes to men. When the two women encounter Tony wandering in the desert, she becomes jealous when he clearly has eyes for Emily over her. Of course, this is after he gives himself a sexy makeover beside their broken down car, when both women see how attractive he actually is under the dreads and scraggly facial hair. 

Quite the Transformation, eh?

I'd say so...

Then Emily is willing to run off into the hills with him, despite the fact that he’s spouting soap opera lines like a lunatic. 

Although, to be fair, I’d let Misha Collins lead me off into the desert hills as well, no matter how crazy he was acting, so I really can’t judge her on that.

Especially if the results would be anything like this!

...Or This....

Along their journey, Melissa learns to toughen up while Emily learns to lighten up a little, but both of them are still overshadowed by Tony and Alan, whom we mostly see in flashbacks or as a dead body until the end of the film. Collins is absolutely hilarious as the crazy, drug addicted hobo living in the desert, who refuses to stay away from Emily, as he believes her to be his love interest in the soap opera he seems to be perpetually living in. How Pellegrino can captivate as a dead, naked man is unclear, but he does, and he is both sexy and creepy in the flashbacks, as well as a little pitiful in places. The Shelton sisters give okay performances, but if it weren’t for Collins and Pellegrino, the film wouldn’t be much worth watching.

The film is definitely funny, in a twisted way, and you can feel the frustration the sisters are feeling as they are trying to find a place to dump Alan’s body and keep being thwarted. The sisters have their comedic moments, especially Melissa with her slightly ditzy, almost childlike demeanor, but, as mentioned above, the real comic relief is Tony, as he is trapped inside his own head, probably high, and convinced he’s filming a soap opera. The people around him don’t know how to handle his crazy and their reactions to him are half the fun. When he snaps back to reality toward the end of the film, it is almost a little sad to see crazy Tony go, but sexy normal Tony is a welcome replacement.

Overall, this is a strange flick, and it took me a couple viewings to gather my feelings on it. The sisters the story centers around annoy me quite a bit, but the characters of Tony, Alan, and Arthur – Melissa’s neighbor- make up for the irritating squabbling between siblings. The Shelton sisters give okay performances, but Misha Collins steals the show, with Mark Pellegrino close behind. Honestly, without these two, the film would have been far less enjoyable.

5.5/10

For those who are interested, one of the few places you can find the entire film in English is here.