For the last ten years, Michael Cera has more or less been playing the exact same character, just put into many different situations. From Arrested Development’s George Michael to Scott Pilgrim to Michael Cera in the webseries Clark and Michael - which is a cheat, I know – Cera has epitomized the role of the slightly awkward, mumbling nice guy, so much so that he seemed to have spawned Jesse Eisenberg. But somehow Chilean director Sebastián Silva has managed to disrupt that status quo with a pair of films releasing in the next few months. We’ve already seen Cera’s malevolently creepy side in the Magic Magic trailer, and now we have our first full trailer for the spaced out comedy Crystal Fairy, thanks to Apples.
All right, all right, I hear you. This is probably more like Cera’s past roles than I’m willing to admit, but he isn’t usually on drugs and he doesn’t usually have hair this amazing. (It looks like a hay bale that won’t accept its station in life.) But the real switcheroo is being performed by former child actress Gaby Hoffman (Field of Dreams), who plays the titular Crystal Fairy, and looks like the most questionable road trip companion that one could ever imagine having.
Cera plays Jamie, a typical American traveler in Chile who takes a road trip with some friends (the director’s brothers Agustin Silva, José Miguel Silva, Juan Andrés Silva) in order to find and imbibe on the legendary San Pedro cactus, known for containing mescaline and being the most prickly of all party favors. Jamie meets Crystal Fairy at a party and drunkenly invites her along on the trip, which will apparently turn out to be one of the worst decisions of his life, given that she is apparently in-fucking-sane. (And also occasionally nude, it looks like. Hairy Fairy!)
The trailer makes the movie look like a really cool beach movie, only one that takes place in the desert. And from what our own Katey Rich has to say about it, it’s a rollicking good time. As the film goes on, Crystal Fairy appears to go from being the aura-obsessed hippie-dippie to being someone at least in tune with herself, if not the rest of the world. And Jamie, meanwhile, retreats from being a fun-seeking tourist to the anal retentive outsider in the group. As non-standard as the storyline may be, the trailer makes the film still seem somewhat realistic. I think we’ve all met someone like Crystal Fairy, who has affected our lives for either a single night or an entire lifetime, with or without clothes on. At least we can leave her behind once this film is over though.
You can catch Crystal Fairy when it trips its way into theaters on July 12, 2013. While we here at Cinema Blend don’t condone using of hallucinogens inside a movie theater, we do condone badmouthing anyone who doesn’t.
