Creating Rem Lezar is a Waking Fever Dream of a Homemade Superhero Kiddie Musical
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Like The Room and the muddled manifestos of Neil Breen, the 1989 kiddie superhero musical Creating Rem Lazar feels less like a conventional movie than a flamboyant expression of its creators’ mental illness.
So I was surprised and, to be honest, vaguely disappointed to discover from the behind the scenes feature on the Creating Rem Lazar Blu-Ray that its creators are apparently relatively normal, sane human beings rather than wild-eyed lunatics who radiate eccentricity from every pore.
I was also legitimately shocked to discover that Creating Rem Lazar is the work of adults and not enterprising ten year olds whose work reflects their youth and lack of experience.
While Creating Rem Lezar looks like it was shot on granny’s camcorder for a budget of anywhere from twenty to thirty dollars it was actually shot on 16MM with a proper crew and lighting and everything.
Creating Rem Lezar nevertheless feels unmistakably like outsider art or a forty-eight minute long fever dream you both want to wake up from and experience over and over again more than a movie.
Weird does not begin to describe Creating Rem Lezar but it’s also almost nauseatingly wholesome, which lends its free-floating, all-consuming intensity and insanity a unique and fascinating texture and feel.
The makers of Creating Rem Lezar had little in the way of money or resources but that somehow did not keep them from attempting a full-on musical that doubles as a superhero movie, albeit one where the superhero engages in little to no super-heroics.
Creating Rem Lazar opens with belligerent brat hero Zach day-dreaming in class about his imaginary friend Rem Lazar, a superhero with a bright purple permed mullet and a disconcertingly intimate relationship with small children who are not his own.
When Zach’s frustrated teacher sends him to the principal’s office he expresses his frustrations through song and is shadowed by Rem Lezar, who is supposed to be a figure of innocent childhood fun but comes off more like something from a horror movie.
It does not help that Lezar sings lyrics like, “Part of the joy that I get from this boy is his innocent laugh and his style” about his weird emotional attachment to an angry child.
When the principal asks the troubled boy what they’re going to do with him he angrily retorts, “I don’t think the question is what we’re going to have to do with me but what we’re going to have to do with you: all of you!”
To punctuate his jackassery, Zach runs out of the principal’s office after accusing him and all adults of not listening to him. His bad behavior continues at art class when Ashlee (Courtney Kernaghan) pays a terrible price for trying to engage him in small talk.
When Ashlee opens with, “My name is Ashlee”, he sneers, “Yah? So?” Undeterred, she innocently inquires “What are you making?”
“None of your business” Zach angrily, inexplicably replies, before insultingly inquiring “Why don’t you go somewhere and braid your hair or something?”
Incidentally, that is now going to be my go-to insult. Whenever anyone pisses me off, I’m going to tell them, “Why don’t you go somewhere and braid your hair or something?”
Zach has no time for stupid girls and their elaborate haircare rituals. He hates everyone and everything except for his imaginary friend and personal hero Rem Lezar.
So you can only imagine how surprised and impressed he is to discover that while he is making a sculpture of Rem Lezar, Ashlee, who he had previously written off as worthless, is drawing Rem Lezar.
It turns out that Rem Lezar is Ashlee’s imaginary friend as well. You know the “Did we just become best friends?” Gif from Stepbrothers? It’s exactly like that.
Learning that a classmate has the same seemingly psychotic fantasy life, delusions and full-on hallucinations as himself transforms Zach instantly and dramatically. He stops being a pint-sized piece of shit and turns into a nice kid who is all about friendship and imagination and believing in yourself.
Zach and Ashlee set about making Rem Lezar a reality even if he seems disconcertingly like a purple-haired kiddy diddler.
Creating Rem Lezar is breathtaking and mortifying in its earnestness, obliviousness and sincerity. Its creators honestly do not seem to have considered, even for a second, that audiences might find a musical where a purple haired fantasy grown-up sings earnest duets with worshipful children a little creepy.
Through the power of friendship, imagination and song, Zach and Ashlee transform a mannequin into Rem Lezar. Unfortunately unless the friends can track down the Quixotic medallion that gives Lezar power he won’t live longer than a single day.
A superhero as off-brand and egregiously non-super-heroic as Rem Lezar deserves an equally ill-considered super-villain. Creating Rem Lezar gives him one in the form of Vorock. He’s a poorly pixilated, 8-bit evil entity played by Scott Zakarin, the film’s writer, director and producer, who hovers malevolently in the sky sneering ominously.
Vorock tells Rem Lezar, Ashlee and Zach that the Quixotic Medallion can be found in the highest point of the imagination. This leads the trio to venture to a park in New York City where the film’s oppressively synthesizer-based musical stylings briefly but wonderfully give way to a bizarre ditty that begins as a doo-wop number before lurching inexplicably into Old School Hip Hop.
Zach proposes that the highest point of imagination is obviously the World Trade Center while Ashlee thinks that mountains are taller than buildings.
For a superhero movie for children, Creating Rem Lezar is perversely light on action. What would you expect from a movie where the only bad guy is just a fuzzy blur in the sky? Rem Lezar doesn’t do anything that superheroes generally do in superhero movies but he does spend a lot of time giving children pep talks and singing.
Vorock reappears in the climax but when Rem, Ashlee and Zach tell him that they like him and want to be his friend he does what in wrestling is called a Face turn and instantly becomes a good guy and a friend of the heroes.
It’s Stepbrothers all over again. Creating Rem Lezar delivers the curious message that the world can be dark, lonely and full of sadness but if you ask someone to be your friend it instantly becomes a wonderland of rainbows, unicorns and ice cream sundaes.
Creating Rem Lezar only lasts 48 minutes but my goodness does it ever take you on a journey. I’ve legitimately never seen anything like it. That’s probably a good thing but it also means that it’s that rarest and most wondrous of pop culture entities: a true original.
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