Fetching Cody (2005) User Reviews

Original and well done

[slake09 · 8/10 · 11 June 2006]

Major movie studios should take some notes here; although this movie looks like it was shot on a minimal budget, the originality of the concept and the continued surprises make it very watchable.

Our protagonist, a drug dealer and male prostitute, tries to make his girlfriend's rotten life better. He repeatedly makes the effort, sometimes not achieving the results he was expecting. The cast of characters, the script and the acting were all well done and believable.

The action all takes place among street people, prostitutes and drug dealers, an unlikely venue for romance. However, it works and kept me interested throughout, wanting to see how it would end up.

Responsible Art

[mjpetro-smtp · 8/10 · 13 May 2012]

Our hero Art is appalled at what has happened to his street girlfriend. When the unlikely opportunity to muck about in the past presents itself, he embarks on a search to find just the right moment where he can apply a tourniquet to her bleeding life.

Nothing seems to work, until Art finally faces up to his own role in her demise.

This story is told with charming devices - a magical beat-down easy chair garnished with Christmas lights, a street prophet that could be right out of "The Fisher King," and an easy humor that coaxes out the darkness of the story and its players with sharp relief.

Fetching Cody: A story about Addictions in Vancouver

[annuskavdpol · 6/10 · 21 February 2014]

Fetching Cody is a movie about addictions in Vancouver. The act and the development of addictions is very subtle in this movie. There are no scenes of needles being shot into veins, no vomiting nor convulsions. Instead it is a love story of two individuals who live in downtown Vancouver and whom seem to gradually become addicted to illegal substances.

A situation starts to occur, which instigates Art to want to change things in order to better the life of his girlfriend, Cody. This leads to an unconventional journey into the past.

The lead character, Art is a very young man, whom camouflages his addictions well. He seems like a very likable individual. There does not seem to be many problems that arise in the lives of Art and Cody - however Art discovers that a lot of Cody's problems resided in her unique past. Uncovering one problem seems to have led to the uncovering of another problem, and this seems to ripple backwards into her childhood - revealing all kinds of reasons why Cody would resort to addictions, in order to numb her own personal pain.

Fetching Cody is a pretty good movie, because it does not throw the viewer into a no-mans-land of disgust and repulsion. However, the addictions that both Art and Cody have seem to resemble, personal sadness and personal alienation.

I believe that if both Cody and Art were versed in understanding mental health and addictions versus inarticulate in these matters - that they both would have been able to have solved and dissolved personal pain in a much more effective and cathartic way. Since the viewer only has the background of Cody, I would say that, when she met Art she was already a trauma victim floating above her own pain - never talking about it, but act it out by prostitution and street substance use.

Surprisingly good

[SumBuddy-3 · 9/10 · 23 June 2010]

I'm giving this one notch short of a 10, simply so I can protest that the film wasn't another 30 minutes longer, I didn't want it to end. Jay Baruchel, As Art really makes impossible scene after impossible scene believable. You get to care as much as he does as the film goes on, about Cody. At lunch I explained it to a friend today who said it "sounds like The Time Traveler's Wife".

While there are certain premise similarities, Time Traveler, is like-for your grandmother, Cody is for the rest of us. An all too real world, mixed with a surreal trip (through time?). Watch the film and find out, it's definitely worth it.

Butterfly Effect Ripoff

[Greatornot · 4/10 · 23 September 2009]

This movie was not even one of the sequels to Butterfly Effect. It was the same movie. Protagonist lived but may have well died because his love was gone. Then again, what you do not know does not hurt you. I thought that the lead actor Jay Baruchel overacted . Sarah Lind was fine in her role as Cody. Art ,our protagonist was not a likable guy at all. I did not see it in his personality that he would be unselfish, especially the way he changed the Christmas Party and hurt Helmet the way he did. That was just downright mean. The film was uneven. I mean finding a recliner that was a time machine. I thought that was just silly. I also did not understand how the hospital could not find Codys last name when she was paying rent and utilities in an apartment. Loose ends like that got to me. I did not like Art , he came across as just very belligerent . Maybe if his childhood was explored a bit, I would understand somewhat of why he turned out to be a druggie. The movie was entertaining but really for not the right reasons. It was silly. Watch it but do not pay for this. If I paid to see this my rating might be a pt or 2 lower.

Awesome movie about how far someone goes for love

[11Forever · 10/10 · 21 May 2006]

I loved this movie great characters and great cinematography i suggest seeing this movie! good job Mr ray. I love Jay in this movie. He was very funny with his comedic takes. Sarah was also very good. I loved the scene at Christmas it was very well down. Kudos to the writer. This movie did pretty well in Vancouver. I saw it twice and every time i liked it more and more. It wasn't what i thought it would be though. I expected it to be just a movie. But its more then that. It shows the dark side of the beautiful Vancouver. There wasn't any over the top stuff it was all very realistic. The part where she is talking with Jay and she then walks away and gets in a car with a guy is very powerful. I love this movie!

Time Enough for Love

[morgie55 · 5/10 · 5 November 2012]

Inner city homeless teenage boy in love with inner city almost homeless teenage dropout who also does some prostituting and drug abuse on the side. The boy is a depressing little guy who likes to take drugs, spaces out, has homeless friends, distrusts authority and lies an awful lot! One day while breaking into his girlfriend Cody's apartment, he finds her unconscious.

Ambulance guys suddenly come in, we don't know who called them. They ask him how long has she been out and he lies and says she just let him in (again with the lies).

She ends up in a coma in the hospital and is near death. This low IQ scum just doesn't get it and goes into denial. Somehow he ends up in a homeless place that has a sofa chair. The sofa chair turns out to be a time/space machine. You tell it where you want to go and it does it.

He goes back to before "Cody got messed up" and finds that she was embarrassed with her period during gym class. After two or so failed attempts to get her tampons he finally succeeds in doing so. Why he thinks Cody going through her period made her quit high school and go on drugs is anyone's guess.

The movie is somewhat endearing and heartwarming. He is guessing on what's up with his druggie girlfriend and going back in time to try to "save" her.

The movie is mildly interesting how Art tries to fix her past to fix her present and goes through all kinds of nonsense to handle her. But it's one of those time travel stories that has changes just make things worse. The final "twist" was predictable, but cute.

It's like a director pretending to be a Kevin Smith movie using a sofa chair time machine, with Tenderloin bums as movie stars.

Mildly recommended.

Clever But Not Clever Enough

[gavin6942 · 5/10 · 31 March 2014]

Art Frankel (Jay Baruchel) arrives at his girlfriend Cody's apartment to find that she has overdosed on heroin. He tries to fix things by traveling back in time in an attempt to prevent her death.

This is a weird time travel story, that largely avoids the fun paradox issues, and comes across something like "Butterfly Effect" (but less dramatic). I wanted to like it, and did for a while, but it became more stale as the time ticked on.

I appreciate the attempt an found it to be rather clever in a number of ways, but never never enough... there was nothing in this film that made it really stand out and be worth recommending to another viewer.

Possibly the Worst Time Travel Story Ever Written

[jah9000 · 1/10 · 10 May 2014]

I will issue a spoiler warning - but truly, nothing can spoil this movie. It comes pre-ruined.

A "time machine" is able to identify people and pin-point locations and dates via vague references - all via voice command, and all while being a cheap recliner wrapped in Christmas lights.

That would place this object in the category of "magical" time travel mechanics, which in and of itself is not out of bounds. The absurdity of it all is simply "Take me to before Cody dropped out of school." How would the object know who Cody was, or when she dropped out of school? And that's just ONE of the many faulty time travel concepts present in the story.

There is so much absurdity in this movie, there's no way to fit a review into 1000 words. The basic fact is, these writers are terrible and the actors did them no favors. It's wall-to-wall paradoxes wrapped in a bunch of cheesy love story clichés, ending with the "Oh it was meant to be" serendipity of the two destined lovers randomly ending up on the same bus together, leaving town.

Special Olympics-like movie tries to compete with real athletes

[Mabie · 2/10 · 25 November 2013]

This movie reminds me of a mentally retarded athlete trying to compete with the "real" athletes on the Olympics (not the Paralympics, though! The real ones) in 1500-metre-run: while everyone his job, he is running in circles, but at least 50 times or so, and everyone is "proud" of him, that he at least did not fall.

I don't really want to vote for it, because it is clear that the producers had no money, but I also suspect, that who ever wrote the script, must have been as high as the protagonist: totally dumb protagonist(s), over-simplified motives (like anyone would kill him-self for getting a boner in school) and a total lack of logic; you name it, the movie has it. The part with the tampons is something that speaks for itself (and that is imbecility). But I will vote it, since I don't understand how the majority could give this "special" movie such an extraordinary good rating.

I really don't feel like it, but I guess I have to go into the time-travel part of this. First of all: I am not quite sure if there was any "actuall" time travel "really" happening in this movie. It all could have been a bad trip (since the protagonist often affirms to be high, when asked about it, which would at least explain, his narrow-mindedness). He even is telling the homeless guy (which really is the best "thing"/actor in the movie; I gotta admit that with some other reviewers, that mentioned it. He seems like an inscrutable, crazy-genius professor from the future.) that the chair is not an actual time-machine after and even just before traveling through time again. Seriously: WTF? Is he really just that high that he doesn't know anymore what's real or not? Now to the part with time-travel logic: jeez, that one really is landmark, when it comes to lack of logic for time-travel stuff. First of all: how come that he is opening the window for his past-self (therefore interacting with his self past) but is never seeing his time-traveling self when he travels back just minutes to undo the mistakes he made (which is, by the way impossible, for nearly all time-travel theories, except the spread-sheet one, but we don't talk about that one since it is used for mainstream-flicks mostly: yes I am looking at you, Back to the future...) And why doesn't any action he made in the past has any consequences at all in the present? And why is the homeless guy telling Art one time, that changing stuff in the past is harder than changing them in them in the present, but some time later he tells him, that is he changes minor things, the outcome could be unpredictable (the so called butterfly effect)? And why is the homeless guy remembering Cody but not Art; or is he just pretending? And was that Gothic-girl on the bus, supposed to be Jody? Questions upon questions, which will not be answered, I guess, because I actually believe that the director did not ask them for himself (or was not capable of doing so...)

So why 2 Stars than, you ask? I do appreciate cinematography (that was the only thing that did not look completely cheap), as well as the basic statement, that you gotta let your loved ones go, in case you are really loving them (should this be the message, the director wanted us to know, which I am not quite convinced, he was).