New DVD I Love: Dakota Skye
Never heard of it? Me neither, not until I opened up the catalog at the video store where I work and I saw it for sale, then I pretty much forgot about it ‘til it was on the shelf on a night when nothing else was appealing to me and I decided to take it home. I was really pleasantly surprised.
In the tradition of Juno and cult favorite Heathers, Dakota Skye is about teens who tell the truth. Or in this case one boy, Jonah (Ian Nelson) who tells the truth and Dakota (Eileen April Boylan) the girl who can see what people are really thinking when they’re lying. Pretty cool superpower, right? Maybe, actually not so much.
If I had gone to high school with Dakota we definitely wouldn’t have been friends. She’s pretty much a baddy, she smokes, dates older guys, is failing out, and stays out all night, but there’s something so endearing about her, because she knows that she is constantly being lied to. That is until her boyfriend’s (J.B. Ghuman Jr.) best friend Jonah comes back to town and she realizes that he never lies, ever, about anything.
These days lots of movies call themselves indies, I guess by definition a movie is an independent film if it’s not backed by a studio at the time of filming, but Dakota Skye is a true indie, it was made by friends and friends of friends, moved from it’s original script location of Georgia, because Phoenix was cheaper to shoot in. But it works, it feels like it had a bigger budget then I’m sure it did and at moments the writing and acting is great. I can’t wait to see more from writer Chad J. Shonk and the two central acotrs don’t have a ton of imdb credits yet, but that’s sure to change after people catch onto this really special little movie.
My only complaint: Besides being about witty teens Dakota Skye has in common with Juno the silly names of the main characters. Dakota Skye, Juno MacGuff, do people that aren’t celebrities name their kids crazy names? On the special features it’s mentioned that Dakota originally had another name, I’d love to know what that was, the name of the film has nothing really to do with the content, I mean Dakota Skye, based on the name alone you would think it’s about farmers or someone at least living in one of the Dakotas and Juno, I actually read once that it was about a pregnant teen (right so far) living in Juneau (not so much).
Anyway, don’t let the bad title dissuade you, the movie is cute and different from a lot of the regurgitated stuff being released right now.
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