The Riddle Of Fire

 When I was a kid one of the TV channels used to put on some ancient shorts where Shirley Temple and some other kids would act out some simple melodrama, all in costume. A quick search shows them to be the 'Baby Burlesks' from the early 1930s.

 The one I remember best is one where two kids (I'm talking five year-olds or so) dressed as sailors and  fought over Temple, who's basically dressed as a cutesy lil' slut. The short ended with the winner of the very simple brawl taking Temple to his room, and even as a kid I could work out it was all about sex; (I'd watched Heavy Metal by then, so I was an expert in the subject - something to do with oddly-shaped women very slowly taking off their clothes and putting them back on again, right?)

 In any case - what the fuck, 30's Hollywood? You're making that Hays fellow look good.

 I hadn't thought about those shorts for literally decades until watching The Riddle of Fire. What is The Riddle of Fire, you ask? It's a bizarre comedy that basically lets a bunch of kids -very young kids, ranging from eight-ish to twelve - fool around in front of the cameras for almost two hours. Some of it feels unscripted, some of it lets the kids act as if they were the heroes of a story that's pitched somewhere between a fairy tale and a backcountry Tarantino crime epic. Every now and then, it'll give one of the kids a ridiculously precocious line, making them sound like Bugsy Siegel or something, which is why it reminded me of the Baby Burlesks. That's the only point in common, by the way - no creepy shit here. Some mild flirting, but it's innocent and played for laughs.

 The film tracks the three immortal lizards - Hazel (Charlie Stover), his little brother Jodie (Skyler Peters), and their friend Alice (Phoebe Ferro). They're basically a feral, amoral gang roving around town in dirt bikes and stealing shit all over the place, and shooting at anything that moves with paintball guns - much to the surrounding adult's mild consternation, eye-rolling and tut-tutting. As the film starts, they break into a warehouse and pull off a wordless heist. Their loot: a gaming console around which they've planned their entire weekend.

 But first they have to get the TV's parental control password from Hazel and Jodie's bed-ridden mother, who's sleeping off a nasty flu. To get on her good side, they set off on a quest to get the perfect blueberry pie.

 That leads them to a quest for the recipe to the perfect blueberry pie, and once they get it, lo and behold: to prepare the perfect blueberry pie, you need speckled eggs. But a ne'er do well gets the last carton at the store, and refuses to share. That's how the Three Immortal Lizards get involved in a war for the eggs against the Hollyhock clan, a petty family criminal enterprise led by the effectively intense Anna-Freya (Lio Tipton), who might be a witch, and the boorish, gun-toting John Redrye (Charles Halford). On their side: The youngest of the Hollyhocks, Petal (Lorelei Olivia Mote), who's an apprentice witch herself.

 There's shades of The Goonies in the confrontation between the Lizards and the Hollyhocks, but this is a much looser, goofier film. I guess it comes from a lineage of kids' adventure stories where the protagonists would have to outsmart some smugglers or something - I don't think I watched any of them, but I did read some Hardy boys and that sort of stuff at school; There was one called The Interstellar Pig, which might have been similar, but it was about aliens. Anyhow! While there are some segments which focus on the adult villains, the point of view remains steadfastly the kids'. The film is (by design) slight to a fault, and some of its escapades are more compelling than others. Intellectually, I recognize this film really shouldn't be two hours long... but then again, it's consistently hilarious and unpredictable, and I never felt it drag.

 It's all shot in glorious, sun-drenched Utah (passing for Wyoming) on 35mm, giving the film the feel of a slightly-aged polaroid without losing any of the vibrant colours. The acting is... well, there's a couple of untrained child actors, and one of them needs to be subtitled because he tends to mumble his lines. These natural performances, alongside the more polished ones from child actresses Ferro and Mote, are an integral part of the film' outsized charm.

 On the adult side of things writer/director Weston Razooli puts in an appearance as one of the Hollyhocks, as do real-life sisters Andrea and Rachel Browne. None of them are great, but they're all endearingly enthusiastic and are obviously having fun. Tipton and Halford both have the presence to provide a backbone for the movie, and both strike the perfect balance between mystery, menace, and incredulity at the fact that they might have gotten away with it if it wasn't for these meddling kids.

 There are so many cool, goofy touches - from the faux-serious fantasy tropes and music to the little carillon sweep that plays whenever a speckled egg, that most fabled of McGuffins, is displayed. I don't like kids, I tend to not like cutesy shit. But this, this isn't cutesy, it's just cute, winsome and so much fun.