What a weird career Richard Linklater has had: from goofy slacker dramas to knock-you-sideways romance, from mainstream kiddie comedies to paranoid junkie cartoons.
His latest, Me and Orson Welles, is perhaps his weirdest to date, on account of its breezy conventionality. It's not even as experimental (praise be) as Cradle Will Rock, Tim Robbins's grating backstage-with-Welles politico-drama, which it superficially resembles.
Zac Efron plays an ambitious high schooler with a decent voice and twinkle toes (plus ca change) who wheedles his way to a walk-on in Welles's infamous 1937 production of Julius Caesar in New York (it's framed by a sort of "I'll never forget that week" nostalgia rhetoric that makes you wish Linklater had gone the whole hog, and bookended proceedings with a bewhiskered Efron dandling a grandchild on his knee, toffees in hand).
Also in the company are Claire Danes, briefly won over by Efron's boyish charms, Eddie Marsan, wringing his hands as the financier, and Ben Chaplin, unexpectedly hilarious as venerable English thesp George Coulouris. Newcomer Christian McKay (who's done a few Miss Marples, and played Welles on stage) makes a magnificent Orson, but it's Efron who really impresses: showing a depth and charm you'd never have dreamed of. He's not afraid to look petulant and silly, and does, frequently. That said, there are moments - check out the menacing screengrab above - in which you can't help but think: Efron should really, at some point, play a killer.
