Madeline & Cooper

Starring: Madeline Hill, Cooper Raiff, Will Youmans
Directed by: Cooper Raiff
Rating: Not rated
Genre: Drama
2018

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A struggling college freshman (Cooper Raiff) begins an unexpected friendship with his RA (Madeline Hill).

Review:

Tim: After really enjoying Cha Cha Real Smooth, I had fun digging into Cooper Raiff's filmography. I really appreciating Shithouse, I went back to the first film he directed, Madeline & Cooper. This was a film he, Madeline Hill, and Will Youmans made while at Occidental College. And that's it. Three people made a movie over spring break in February. It was his directorial debut, a 56 minute film (which technically qualifies as a feature). It's rough, amateurish, flawed. But, it also shows real heart and inspiration, two things that Raiff would use in his Shithouse remake of this film, as well as the even more polished Cha Cha Real Smooth.

It was a lot of fun watching this movie after seeing the remake. Raiff was experimenting, learning how to act and direct here. The quality of the film isn't great. Too many scenes are far too dark. The AV doesn't always match up and it's tough to hear portions of the film. Those aren't good things, but they do make this film feel a bit endearing. Knowing that Raiff made this with one day of preproduction is actually quite impressive. It's a no-budget, minuscule film, but the seeds of something special are absolutely buried within it. I had fun recognizing that the best scenes from this film all make it into Shithouse. Some of the dialogue is taken directly from this film and the best scenes translate into the remake. Of course, his second film is sleeker, actually had a budget, etc. But, it's so interesting to compare this film to that one. You can tell Raiff knew he had a nugget of something incredible here. He captures something true about life in college in the 2010s, something about that time of life when we're naive but closer to adulthood than we realize. It's no surprise that he would revisit this story and these characters.

I also enjoyed seeing Raiff play the Cooper role here. His acting is rough and his inexperience shows. There's glimmers of what differentiates him as an actor and it's fascinating how he gave oxygen to these aspects of his performance in the remake. This is just him, as a college student, poking his way into the world of cinema. There's not a ton to love about his performance, outside of those glimpses. Madeline Hill definitely isn't an actor. She does her best, but this is obviously not her story, not her words. I don't fault her at all- I might not have loved her performance, but I don't know how any college student in her situation would have done much better. I give her a ton of credit for going along with Raiff's crazy idea and making this movie. Will Youmans makes an uncredited appearance in Shithouse. Similarly, his acting is rough here. That's to be expected.

As I think about Madeline & Cooper, it's somewhat of an uncommon film for me to review. I'm obviously comparing this to movies with actual budgets, produced by major studios. In that context, the movie is far beneath them in terms of quality. However, while you can't deny that, you have to give Raiff extreme amounts of credit for crafting a film this effective while in college. It's never a bad movie and it's mostly held back by the inexperience of the three (!) people involved in making it and their lack of money to fund the endeavor. When you consider all the context, the fact that this film exists and is actually not bad, well, that's truly impressive. I had a fun time watching this movie and truth be told, while deeply flawed, it's better than many Hollywood productions I've seen.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating- 6



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Shithouse, Cha Cha Real Smooth