Well, this is a bit of a change from my regularly scheduled book reviews. Tracy Buckles is a web series, and I don’t really watch too much film these days. Even the short stuff. However, when Robin Nyström, the writer and director of this series, approached me to see if I’d be interested in having a look and saying some things after I did so, it didn’t take me long to decide that Tracy Buckles is something I very probably wanted to have a look at. It was described as R-Rated Harry Potter. Who doesn’t want that in their lives?
In a world where spells and potions are commonplace, a young woman named Tracy Buckles is struck by a despicable curse that prevents other people from hearing her voice. She joins forces with a nameless drifter and a bumbling wizard in order to break free from the evil sorcery. With a dynamic female lead, plenty of irreverent humor, and a sprinkle of magic, Tracy Buckles tells an epic story across six fast-paced episodes.
So, this is the story of Tracy Buckles, who lives in a world where magic exists and is implied to be very commonplace. This story of Tracy being cursed, and her efforts to break that curse so she won’t miss her audition the next day takes place in six episodes that are each a bit short of five minutes.
So this is a series you can watch from start to finish in a little less than half an hour. 🙂
Tracy (played by Ana Lake) is an up and coming actor who lives with her mom in California. The sort of magic-user who would learn to conjure a fireball to light her bong, Tracy is suitably befuddled when Janie (Macie Wilson), a girl she knew in high school, shows up at her door and puts a curse on her for something that happened over four years earlier. Now, nobody can hear anything that Tracy says.
In her attempts to break this curse, she teams up with an also cursed man who only calls himself No One (Sergio Gavidia), who was cursed by Janie with invisibility, and together they seek out a wizard named Waxel (Gale McNeeley) to break their curses.
My favorite character in this series was most definitely Janie, who manages to be that mean girl who also just happens to be an evil sorceress, who would absolutely go to evil sorceress levels in order to get back at her high school rivals for perceived slights. I was also a big fan of Waxel the Wizard, but also of his wife Lucinda (Rosh Wright) who was there with eyes rolling every bumbling step of his way.
Now, I obviously have far more experience talking about books than film, and so this probably isn’t going to be the sort of review that a film reviewer would give, but I can tell you that I quite enjoyed my half an hour with Tracy. The story was often laugh-out-loud funny and I definitely found myself cheering for Tracy and No One to win. I am no real judge of acting, but I think that the cast did a fantastic job bringing everyone to life. There was some wonderful camera work, that made some scenes really pop out to me (there’s a hilarious shower scene that comes to mind).
So all told, this web series is quite enjoyable, and is definitely worth a half an hour of your time. 🙂
You can see it here, at https://www.tracybuckles.com/ or on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/album/5807934
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