Directed by Weston Razooli
Written by Weston Razooli
Starring:
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Lio Tipton as Anna-Freya Hollyhock
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Charles Halford as John Redrye
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Charlie Stover as Hazel A’Dale
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Skyler Peters as Jodie A’Dale
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Phoebe Ferro as Alice
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Olivia Mote as Petal Hollyhock
Rating: 
Quirky cinema doesn’t get as rollicking fun as this American Mountain West fable about an intrepid trio of mischievous kids transcending the trivial, manifesting the mundane as otherworldly, morphing the prose of everyday life into teenage rhapsody. At its best, Riddle of Fire feels as if Truffaut had directed a classic fable revamped with Andersonian eccentricities set in the mystique of the American wilderness. It is gorgeous stuff throughout. But director Weston Razooli’s film debut is not only lovely because its methodical approach is gorgeous to behold, it is sublime because through its contemplation it achieves the versification of the precocious journey, the adventure of being a kid. Even the enchanting plot – which functions as a postmodern take on traditional fairy tales – is far more invested in fleshing out the exhilarating events via rhythms and symmetries, moods and aesthetics rather than relying on the structural orthodoxy of the three-act formula.
The quest moves along with emotional dynamics and is chronicled according to the whims of our three beloved bandits. It all kicks off with storytelling subjectivity, three face-covered, mercurial youths riding Mini Dirt Bikes pull off a meticulous operation to steal the latest video game technology from a store’s warehouse. The rogue trio only armed with paintball guns despite being caught in the act of stealing, manage to successfully flee the scene with the target in their hands. Now with their faces uncovered the three kids sitting impatiently to get a taste of the video game are confronted with another obstacle, perhaps much more challenging than their tactical theft scheme: Finding out what the TV’s parental control password is. Brothers Hazel (Charlie Stover) and Jodie A’Dale (Skyler Peters) along with their loyal girl friend Alice (Phoebe Ferro) beg their mother, who is lying sick in bed, to give them the password. The mother will provide it only on one condition: The three of them must get her a blueberry pie. Simple as it sounds, Riddle of Fire turns into an extraordinary affair about the three kids on an epic quest for that yummy blueberry pie. Everything that could go wrong, goes very wrong. And the proceedings are a delight to watch.
Weston Razooli’s directorial wit finds in the didactic fable a means to a profane naturalism, his characters are not the standard kids we get in hackneyed pubescent flicks. Hazel, Jodie and Alice are badass, if you mess with them, you’re screwed. They don’t hesitate in the slightest to pull the trigger of their menacing paintball guns, and not to mention their refined vocabulary, all three are verbally skilled at swearing. Yet this is not vulgarity for the sake of being vulgar, their mannerisms are frisky, they are children being children; speaking the kind of foul language that such impish kids would use outside the supervision of their parents.
Razooli doesn’t cheat with the farcical jokes of his script, but rather stays true to the childlike perspective of the ordinary world. In the high-spirited quest for the blueberry pie, the unruly threesome stumble upon a succession of challenges, several of which lead them to run afoul of the Enchanted Blade gang, led by an apparent witch Anna-Freya Hollyhock (Lio Tipton). And I only say “apparent” because none of the fantastical can be taken completely literally. Though this is merely my conjecture, I believe that one of the pleasures of this film is to perceive and appreciate the unspecified phenomenology with the same subjectivity with which everything is rendered within the narrative.
Like any fairy tale, there is a princess, a witch, a blue speckled egg, heroes and heroines. But it all unfolds in the real world, with its perils and its bewilderments. By the time the three adventurous kids befriend the little princess Petal (Lorelei Mote), the film hits its most tender notes. But between the graceful flair and the campy teenage ecstasy, the film never falls into schmaltz; it reaches an affectionate, heartfelt and genuine tenderness when the four children gathered in the mystical woodland setting empathize with each other by communicating their woes, that’s when you get that the whole film was ultimately a pursuit of enlightenment, not necessarily figuring out the “whys” of their fatherless lives, but embracing life for what it is and making an adventure out of it. Messy is more fun than perfect.
And it’s all the more heartwarming to watch because the wonderful performances of the kids are the consummate marriage of hilarity and poignancy. They are stupendous. It’s all a joyous viewing experience, which Weston Razooli pulls off without pretentiousness or pedantry, it’s pure simplicity executed majestically if that means anything. One of the most entertaining movies ever made about kids being kids. And the only movie that has the temerity to wrap it all up by playing Riz Ortolani’s Cannibal Holocaust theme music during the sweetest sequence of the whole film. A major audiovisual oxymoron that left me flabbergasted in the very best sense of the word. Whether it was a fucked-up gag or not, it worked beautifully. As singular and surreal as it was funny.