'Fire Mystery' review: Sentimental debut crumbles under the weight of its gimmicky

Razooli’s style is admirable. Shot on 03 mm film, his American landscape, similar to Sean Price Landscapes portrayed by Sean Price Williams in other Directors’ Fortnight selections Sweet East , inspire wonder and appreciation. Razooli mixes eye-level and ground-level footage with vibrant sounds designed by Garrard Whatley to bring nature to life. Mystery of Fire has similar aesthetic marks to Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom , another film built around adventurous kids movie of. But there’s a preciousness to the young director’s approach to his material that fuels our admiration all the more.

Riddle of Fire tried to capture the way extraordinary kids experience the world, but the results came close. It’s hard not to think about Margo Jefferson’s useful analysis while considering This movie plays when something goes wrong. “The balance between instinct and knowledge is difficult to maintain. The audience doesn’t want to feel that the child is just a charming little stand-in for the author,” she wrote. “Innocence and experience can become annoying when writers over-identify with their child characters.” Jodie, Alice and Hazel—with their precocious and unrealistic wit—often feel like these kinds of kids.

The movie begins with a heist. Desperate for a new video game, Jodie, Alice and Hazel decide to steal it from the manufacturer’s warehouse. Razooli choreographed the scene, which involved dodging unsuspecting guards and slipping between boxes with confidence and humor. It’s a makeshift gang worth introducing as they secure cargo and ride home on their bikes. However, their plan is not foolproof. When they got home, the kids couldn’t wait to unpack the game and hook it up to the TV. Just as they were about to sit down, in their snack tower, they realized they didn’t know the TV’s password.

So they started the adventure of finding the password. After pleading with Judy and Hazel’s bedridden mother (played by Danielle Hotmer, who has a cold), they strike a deal: if the kids can find her a blueberry pie (which It’s what her grandmother used to do when she was sick) a kid) and she’d give them passwords and give them two hours of uninterrupted screen time.

While Razooli manages to extract some funny moments from his three young actors, most of the performances are clumsy. Part of it is the disconnect between the director’s reverence for childhood and the reality of being a child. Jodie, Hazel, and Alice often make jokes and comments that adults would find endearing or charming. This turns them into props for ideas—about youthful innocence and misbehavior—rather than making them living characters. The acting ends up being almost close to the comics.

In their quest to find the spotted egg, the children follow members of a group called the Magic Blades, whose leader Anna-Freya Hollyhock (Lio Tipton) is a witch. Riddle of Fire From the small town of children into the surrounding woodlands, where they meet Anna-Freya’s daughter Petal (Lorelei Olivia Mote). Three becomes four when Judy, Hazel, and Alice team up with Petal to get the eggs.

As the kids find themselves in increasingly dangerous situations, the initially riveting adventure begins to feel like a test of endurance. Sets became longer and more indulgent, and the genres Razooli was experimenting with—heist, adventure, comedy—collided rather than complemented each other. And Riddle of Fire starts to feel like a compilation of distracting gags rather than a true story.