Let's Be Leon

The Tribeca Film Festival came out to LA and I caught The Trotsky. It's a comedy starring Jay Baruchel about a teenager who believes he's the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky. His main activity is trying to unionize his high school class.

The film has a charming cast (I met Emily Hampshire after the showing and told her she did a good job), but the plot doesn't quite work. Why does he believe he's Trotsky? Is he psychotic? And what would it mean, anyway? To this kid, it means stuff like he needs to be exiled and he has to marry an older woman named Alexandra. Really? Does that mean he expects to be assassinated with an ice pick?

But what interested me was the very idea of the plot. The film isn't particularly political, but we're supposed to find the protagonist quirky, even sympathetic. Is someone imitating an architect of the Russian Revolution, an evil that brought forth massive death and destruction, funny? People may not have the same reaction to communism that they do to fascism, but still, shouldn't it be so discredited that a kid who wants to be Trotsky wouldn't be that amusing?

PS The film was set in Montreal (where I was born), and I believe got money from Quebec, so every now and then someone would break out into French.