In a world where we so often feel like every story has been told, perhaps a movie about a guy who builds a cardboard labyrinth in his apartment is just what we need to make us believe in original ideas again. A bizarre low budget comedy from first time director and co-writer Bill Watterson, Dave Made A Maze is at once a heartfelt homage to the Spielbergian fantasy adventure, and a very modern, very hipstery indie film about the difficulties faced by those of us still harbouring creative ambitions well into adulthood, yet struggling to realise those dreams. Appropriately enough it’s a very ambitious piece of work, and there are certainly places where it might fall a little short of what it’s aiming for, but there’s no denying the level of imagination and wit that’s gone into it.
Annie (Meera Rohit Kumbhani) and Dave (Nick Thune) are by all appearances a fairly typical thirtysomething couple. While we’re not given too much detail on their backstory it’s apparent that they’ve spent some years together having bonded over their shared artistic aspirations; but where Annie seems to have grown up and gone professional, Dave still can’t get his head out of the clouds long enough to either a) see any of his projects through to completion or b) get a job. For better or worse, this changes when Annie goes away for a few days on business, and a sudden hit of inspiration sees Dave get to work on the aforementioned cardboard maze. When Annie gets home, she finds what appears to be an oversized box fort in the middle of the apartment, with Dave unseen within, insisting it’s not safe for him to come out or for her to come in. Naturally fearing her beloved is having a nervous breakdown, Annie calls in their old friend Gordon (Adam Busch, best known as that bastard who murdered Tara on Buffy), but when he in turn proves unable to persuade Dave to leave the maze he chooses instead to make the most of the interesting situation and call in their filmmaker friend Harry (James Urbaniak), his crew and a few assorted hangers-on to document the event. Against Dave’s wishes, they all soon enter the maze to get him out – and find that, as Dave had told them, it’s somewhat bigger on the inside. Indeed, it’s not just a mock labyrinth, it’s a sprawling maze of cardboard catacombs which has taken on a life of its own; and what labyrinth is complete without its share of potentially lethal surprises?
As should be clear from that synopsis, this is a film whose characters are all arty-farty psuedo-intellectual types spouting pithy self-referential observations at every turn. It’s entirely likely that this slightly smug sensibility is liable to put some viewers off, and I’d be lying if I said it was necessarily laugh-a-minute stuff, which we can certainly deem a considerable issue given that Dave Made A Maze is first and foremost a comedy. Even so, while the humour may not always land, and the characterisations lean towards over-familiar stereotypes (the angst-ridden struggling artist, the long-suffering level-headed girlfriend, the wisecracking best friend with a beard), there’s enough chemistry between the cast to keep the viewer invested.
Of course, the actors are in this instance little more than the window dressing on what has to be one of the most jaw-dropping feats of production design I’ve ever seen in such a clearly low budget production. Plenty of penny-pinching fantasy films have built their sets out of household materials, but Dave Makes A Maze does so without ever attempting to hide it, the homemade nature of the fantastical construction being entirely the point, and this is where both the film’s wonder and most of its comedy value come from. We might easily be looking at a booby-trapped network of cavernous tunnels from an Indiana Jones adventure or The Goonies, but for the simple detail that literally everything is constructed from cardboard and other such readily available objects from around the house, and the level of artistry and imagination that has gone into even the smallest, most transitory aspects of the maze are really quite astounding. So great are the intricacies, it seems inevitable that new details will pop out with each viewing, no doubt helping the film’s chances of attaining cult status. (Given that premier cult label Arrow Video have picked it up, clearly someone fancies its chances there.)
We might easily question just how well knowing, adult-oriented hipster humour can sit alongside such fantastical elements drawing on a childlike sense of wonder and disbelief suspended to breaking point (I’m clumsily mixing analogies there, but you get the gist). However, in a sense this reflects the dilemma at the heart of Dave Makes A Maze: the struggle to balance the dreams of youth with the realities of adulthood. Dave’s anxiety over hitting his thirties without having done half the things he meant to do is sure to strike a chord with many, and one suspects it’s something that resonates deeply with director Watterson, given he’s making his first film as a man in his mid-forties (although he’s got quite an acting CV to his name). Of course, both the director’s work here and the arc of his lead protagonist serve to demonstrate that it doesn’t matter how fast you are out of the gate, so long as you find your own way eventually. In all this, Dave Makes A Maze very much appeals to the glass-half-full optimism of my better self, and I daresay you’d have to be a thoroughly cynical bastard for it not to warm your heart just a little.
Dave Made A Maze is released to Blu-ray, VOD and download in the UK on 28th January, from Arrow Video.