SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
I saw the last showing of the documentary, Some Assembly Required at the Paramount Theater Friday Morning. The movie is about 6 teams of middle-schoolers who compete in the National Toy Challenge. The idea is for kids to design and create a toy or game. Astronaut, Dr. Sally Ride is behind the nation-wide competition and she, also, happens to be the executive producer of this film.
Director and producer Dori Berinstein follows the different teams from Connecticut, Michigan, Washington D.C., New Jersey and 2 teams from Harlem. From wise cracking city boys to smarty pants Girl Scouts, a writer couldn’t have written better characters, even the different adults leading the group are richly drawn, a few teachers, a girl scout leader, and a mom.
Some Assembly Required follows each team through the design and submission process, as they create and build their toy and finally all the way to San Diego for the finals. I talked with Berinstein, who says the crews actually followed 50 teams but had to narrow it down.
Throughout the movie three little girls behind me were cracking up.
The kids on screen being kids was reflected back in the gigling and comments behind me. Most of what the kids did was pretty funny, on and off the screen.
Mom Stacey Abel saw he movie earlier in the week and says she had to bring back her daughter, Maya and two of her friends. ”Oh I loved it .. I loved it and the things I loved about it was that it covered the entire process I loved that it showed team work,” Abel says,”It was a challenge to kids to work as a team.”
You can see the three here – Maya Lawrence (9), Samantha Nevarez (8) and Kelsey Dominguez (9).
Maya says, ” The movie.. it kind of showed that how… that it is not all … all about winning it is about having fun and trying something new.”
The trio was bouncing around the lobby of the theater as I talked with Abel and she says that’s just why she thought they would get a lot out of watching kids turn energy into creation.
“I just thought these girls need… these girls are all so creative and I mean creative when they come over they go away for hours and go into imagination land and dream up all sorts of things,” Abel said, “I just thought they would love to come see it.” Watching the movie you can feel each group’s passion for their toy.
Maya’s friend Samantha describes some of the inventions, ”It was cool… they had.. different things.. like one person did boogie boards with a light under.. one team did a punching bag…and they lit up randomly and you had to punch it.”
The toys that made it to nationals were the floating baseball set, the lighted punching bag, a lighted board game about the climate and endangered animals, another game about the challenges of life, a pop-culture survival board game and finally, the Buga Board, a floating boogie board with a viewer finder and light.
“I heard them laughing just really excited throughout the movie just like I thought they would be,” Abel says,” I wanted to get a copy of this movie and own it and show it.”
The director told me for now the movie is only playing at festivals, but they expect a distribution deal soon. So keep an eye out for Some Assembly Required in the DVD aisle.
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