Scrapper is a Fun and Familiar Indie Comedy
Originally watched as part of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. This film may not be currently available or may still be seeking distribution.
Charlotte Regan’s Scrapper is a fun, if familiar, indie drama. It was certainly one of the lighter films I caught as part of Sundance 2023, and it provided a bright and welcome balance to the slate of tense dramas and melancholy documentaries that filled my festival.
Scrapper follows Georgie (Lola Cambell), a vibrant and strong-willed pre-teen who’s responding to her mother’s death by structuring a fairly orderly life on her own. Alone, that is, unless you count the spiders she lives with. (They do talk, after all.) Georgie mostly fills her days stealing bikes with her friend Ali and duping the hardly involved social workers checking in on her. She undoubtedly has a burgeoning talent as a young con artist.
Georgie is grieving, to be sure, but she’s also dutifully checking off her progress through the five stages of her grief—and she seems quite pleased with her progress. But then her estranged father, Jason (Harris Dickinson), shows up to take over things. As could be expected, their wills clash and spark as they move from distrust to reluctance to connection and eventual embrace.
Jason arrives with bleached hair and a bit of a devil-may-care edge. His attitude is summed up best and most succinctly in an aside: “He thinks he’s in 8 Mile.” Over time, however, he earns some respect as he teaches Georgie and Ali how to scratch the serial numbers off of bikes.
Truth be told, Jason wants to be a dad to Georgie, but he hasn’t had any practice. Refreshingly, it’s more his inexperience than his reluctance that gets in his way. He’s actually eager, just fearful. As Jason and Georgie grow closer, Dickinson displays an increasing care in Jason—and an increasing uncertainty about how to act on it.
For her part, Georgie has more grief than she’s quite willing to confess, forming the detritus of her pain into a new life. She even takes scrap to build a tower to the sky in an attempt to reach her mother. As Georgie and Jason begin to grow honest affection for one another, they find the strength to confront the messes in their lives.
It’s a bit of a familiar story for an indie comedy, but it demonstrates Regan’s vision and skill. There’s an occasional flash of Wes Anderson and Taika Waititi, but Scrapper maintains an energy all its own. The scenes are brightly colored and energetically shot, with an off-the-wall sense of humor driving the dialogue.
Regan has crafted a debut that is warm and playful, albeit one that doesn’t bring a whole lot new to the table. Scrapper demonstrates a strong, character driven sense of comedy, and it will be interesting to see what Charlotte Regan does next. Ultimately, your delight with Scrapper may just hinge on how much you’re willing to chuckle at those talking spiders.
