Raising the Stakes (2005) - By Brian Morton

Film Reviews: Raising the Stakes (2005) - By Brian Morton
Posted on Sunday, May 01, 2005 @ 00:00:00 Mountain Daylight Time by Duane

There's been a lot of debate where I work lately about geeks, nerds, and dorks. Well, I'm here to clear this up for once and for all! A geek is someone who identifies with something; say Star Trek or Star Wars, to nearly the exclusion of all else. You'll usually find geeks at conventions forwarding their theories on things that really don't matter and I really don't want to write about at all, but it usually has to do with an upgrade of a warp engine or the quantum physics of a light-saber. A nerd is merely a geek who's evolved slightly. A nerd was a geek and is familiar with all the mythology and trivia of something, say Star Trek or Star Wars, but in the pursuit of more information on his favorite subject has obtained enough knowledge on technology to make himself a valuable tool in the workplace...but a tool none-the-less. A nerd is usually in the IT department of your company, and while he keeps his geek-hood quiet, trust me, there's a Star Trek uniform under that button down shirt. And a dork, well a dork is the guy who talks incessantly about his geek-hood. You see, even geeks know that they're geeks and they've been wedgied enough to keep quiet about it in public. A dork however isn't smart enough to have figured this out and is therefore subject to scorn and ridicule, even by the geeks they so desperately long to be. Now, what does this have to do with any movies you ask, well, the movie this time is a great story of a couple of dorks, who set out to go from merely wearing the uniform to actually joining the team.

The movie is called Raising The Stakes and it's the story of Steve and Bob. Now, Steve and Bob are the town dorks, you know the ones, they're into dungeons and dragons and will openly discuss the benefits of a 10 sided dice saving roll in relation to hanging out at the local burger joint or talk about having a plus 3 charisma when it comes to picking up the ladies. I think we all know whom we're talking about here. Well, Steve and Bob have fixated on vampires and run around at night with fangs and makeup trying to scare the townspeople. When they run into the local snake-oil salesman, who just so happens to be selling a potion that will turn them into actual vampires, Steve and Bob are in fan boy heaven!

Now, once they're vampires, Steve and Bob think that life will be easy, but they don't realize that there's a vampire union they have to join, the townspeople still just see them as the geeks that they are and life isn't a whole lot better. In fact, nothing changes much in their lives, except that they can't go out in the sunlight. In their quest to reverse their potion they have to raise enough money to buy an antidote, they start a trend among the young people to be vampires and even try their hand at armed robbery.

Raising The Stakes is one of the funniest movies I've seen in a long time. This is what a vampire movie might look like if a young Kevin Smith made it. In fact, I would describe this movie as a cross between Trekkies and Clerks...if you can imagine such a thing! The cast is very strong, the writing is excellent and overall this is one of the best low-budget movies I've seen in a long time. Now, I know that I might seem like I'm gushing, but, I have to be honest here. And, I'm coming out of the proverbial closet only here. You see, I AM A GEEK. So, I can identify with Steve and Bob, in fact, as I watched the movie, I kept thinking to myself, this is just like I acted at that age...stupid, without direction, and, even more stupid. So, if you're looking for a movie that's got a little more going on that just horror and actually has a great sense of humor about itself, you might check out Raising The Stakes, it's well worth your time, in fact, I'm gathering my geeky friends to do a mass viewing! We'll all wear our Star Trek uniforms, have a little Romulan ale, you know, you're typical geek gathering...you're all invited!!

For more info about Raising The Stakes, you should visit http://www.raisingthestakes.co.nr. Do it now!!!