Drama: Killer Diller

Killer Diller (2004)

Everyone had seen Vernon driving around town in his invisible Plymouth, but nobody realized that the high level autistic teen was a blues piano playing genius. Wesley is a young car thief/blues guitarist who has been sent to a halfway house for young non-violent offenders run by Ned, who only accepts musicians to play in his gospel band. Wesley runs into Vernon at a small concert and after hearing him play the piano, convinces him to come join the halfway house band. Together with the other members of the halfway house they drop the lame gospel act and form "the Killer Diller Blues Band," which quickly becomes the talk of the town.

I can't even tell you how or why I added this to my DVD queue, but I did, and I'm grateful. This was a surprisingly touching movie. Fred Willard plays Ned, and his brother Deermont is played by John Michael Higgins, both of whom have worked together numerous times on Christopher Guest films. Though they were obviously thrown into the cast for comedic effect, the relationship between Wesley (William Lee Scott) and Vernon (Lucas Black) is both heartwarming and silly. Black did a phenomenal job playing Vernon, and the rest of the cast did a decent job playing the bandmates.

The storyline needed some work, and I think they missed out by not using more of the comedic chemistry between Willard and Higgins. There's no doubt that this is a "feel good" movie, and can certainly even be considered a little "cheesy." The live performance scenes could have been
choreographed better, but they still were extremely fun to watch and hear.

this was good