Never Been Thawed

Never Been Thawed is definitely an experimental comic film that feeds of the stale parts of the culture and lifestyle of the Southwest of the United State, in particular Phoenix, Arizona, where it was filmed. Throughout the film, we see different gags that relate to some of the stereotypes of the culture in Phoenix. Christianity, capitalism, disconnected communities, noise contamination, and unnecessary driving are among the aspects that are touched by the film. The characters, mise en scène, and plot make of this low budget independent film stand out and become an unexpected relative success.

The main character, Shawn Anderson, is a collector of frozen entrees and a Christian Rock musician. Although he lacks a real passion, he is willing to do whatever it takes to be "successful". He changes his dark and stupid heavy metal band's style to Christian heavy metal just by replacing the parts of the lyrics that contain"fuck" with "pray." Anderson is also one of the organizers of the frozen entrees convention where he has as a rival for the leadership a corporate trainer named Vince, frozen entree collector, whom utilizes Viet Cong prison procedures to shape corporate employee.
Shelly Toue, another member of the frozen food collectors works for the the Intercourse Prevention Hotline. Shelly is a a firm Christian follower and believes that sex should only happen after marriage, nevertheless, she has a crush on Anderson and ends up having sex with him in a very improvised manner.
In addition to the group of frozen food collectors, the life's of the characters revolves around some inconsistencies. While Anderson acts as Christian and support anti-abortion laws, by the end of the movie we find out that he not only sleeps around with many people, but also has to pay child support for which he looses the rights to any profit from the frozen food convention.
Milo Binder, owner of the No Choice Cafe and manager of Anderson's band The Chisters, is another character that reinforces the criticism agains Christians. Binder is a ruthless boss and seems to be in the business as a Christian only to profit.

In addition to the characters, the mise en scène seems to reflect part of the Phoenix lifestyle. The golf cart, the empty parking lots and long distance drives add to the sence of less that health or cohesive community. Also, the constant noise of cars ads to the morbid reality of the place. Every exchange between people is affected by traffic noise.

In my opinion, the plot seems to add an interesting development of situations that contribute to the humor of this mockumentary. At the beginning we see this "perfect" Christian characters that are transformed by a frozen entree convention and begin to do what they really want with their lives. From my perspective, there is a lot of tension at the beginning of the film that finally dissipates by the end as the characters drop their fake believes and become free in their own weird way. The firefighter finally accepts his homosexuality, Shelly seems to accept sex in her life, Al goes back to playing real heavy metal, and Vince continues being a corporate d%*#+.