Made for his thesis at USC, GoldenBox is Matt MacDonald's ode not so such to the N64 game Goldeneye, but moreso to the period of the life that it was a big part of. I assume this mainly because although I am older than him, GoldenEye also holds a special place in my memory as a game played with siblings and friends huddled round one television. The plot sees friends Jeff and Tucker facing a big change in their life as their nightly routine of playing video games together in the basement will end when Jeff takes a job in Russia and moves away. Tucker asks one last favor before he goes – give him a lift to the UPEx parcel depot, to collect a golden parcel. However when he learns it is scheduled for incineration, more direct action is required.
There is a lot to like in this short film, and a lot of good ideas to be worked with, and a lot of it does work to a point, even if unfortunately no one aspect of it really succeeds as totally as one would have liked. The plot has humor; is a sort of adult coming-of- age tale; has fantasy elements in the Bond-esque break-in; and has a heart of friendship to work with – all of these elements are delivered together in a way that is broadly engaging and amusing, however it is done in a way that "broad" is the key word. Despite the good ideas and ambitious nature of the project, there is a slight lack of sharpness to the writing – so the humor is amusing but never hilarious; the action is fun but never thrilling, the friendship is recognizable but never genuine, and the device of growing up is used but not explored or considered as a real thing. I don't mean to sound negative, because I do not think any of these things were done badly, it is just that all of them fall short a little bit of where I think the film was trying to be, and when this happens across the board, it is hard not to see the whole film as falling short.
One cannot fault the ideas and the production values though, and this is a short that is ambitious; the location, the "careful-not to break copyright" GoldenEye references, and so on – everything looks good and adds to the feeling that this is not only a very professional piece of work, but also one that should have been just as good in other areas. Despite this, the film is broadly successful and does more than enough right to make for entertaining and amusing viewing, even if it doesn't ever soar as you want it to.
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