BRAVE NEW JERSEY: An Endlessly Endearing Slice Of Americana

It was the most notorious radio drama of all time.

Sunday, October 30th 1938. At 8pm, listeners to CBS radio stations learned, via a series of rapid-fire news reports, expert testimony, and on-the ground witnesses, that the United States was under attack from Martian invaders. Understandably, widespread panic ensued.

Of course, we know now that the events of that October night, nearly eighty years ago, were not the end of the world. They were a dramatic broadcast, adapted from a novel by H. G Wells, and directed by a twenty-three year old Orson Welles.

At the time, though, reportedly at least, hundreds of thousands of listeners thought their end was nigh. Brave New Jersey imagines what this night must have been like in a small town, not far from where the ‘Martians’ were said to have landed.

Brave New Jersey

Lullaby, population 506, is governed by Mayor Clark Hill (Tony Hale). Though he is the mayor, his diffident nature leaves him undermined and undervalued by Lullaby’s townsfolk. His chief detractor is blowhard entrepreneur Paul Davison (Sam Jaegar), whose latest invention is ‘The Rotolactor’, which will enable farmers to milk fifteen cows at once. If he ever gets it to work.

The sensitive, softly spoken Clark has an obvious candle for Paul’s wife Lorraine (Heather Burns), who is certainly not satisfied with her marriage. Schoolteacher Peg (Anna Camp) is also unhappy in her relationship; though her fiancé Chardy (Matt Oberg) is sweet, he is comfortable with small town life, and the restrictions it places on women. Peg wants bigger things.

Other residents include Reverend Ray Rogers (Dan Bakkedahl), whose devotion to the good book has been on the wane of late (much to the chagrin of his parishioners), and Ann (Grace Kauffman), the young daughter of Paul and Lorraine, who is cannier than almost all her elders.

Though the Martian attack may be fake, the impact the news of it has on Lullaby and its citizens, over one fraught and frightening night, proves to be very, very real.

If Tonight Was Your Last Night…

Songs, self-help gurus, and sickly social media posts are always asking ‘What would you do if this was your last night on earth?’ In Brave New Jersey, we see this question asked of the citizens of Lullaby, and the answers are funny, sad, and in once case, quite shocking.

As soon as Phil Davison hears the radio broadcast, he zooms off in his car, leaving his wife and daughter stunned. His leaving is no big surprise; we’ve seen already that the Davison marriage is not a happy one. But the brutal speed of his departure still comes as a bombshell. It’s one of several examples in Brave New Jersey of real emotion hiding behind a broadly comic outer shell.

Another of these instances comes in the relationship between school teacher Peg, and her fiancé Chardy. The two get engaged in front of her students at the beginning of the film, and she doesn’t look pleased to be stuck with her small-minded, small town sweetheart for the rest of her life.

The ‘alien attack’ is a chance for her to break out, lose her inhibitions and take control, and she loves it (perhaps a little too much). After discovering that the invasion was just a fiction, she is the only one of the characters left disappointed. Brave New Jersey is indeed brave to leave her ultimate fate open-ended.

An Unlikely Leading Man

Tony Hale is probably best known as Buster, the strange youngest son of the dysfunctional Bluth family, the subject of cult TV show Arrested Development. It’s doubtful that many who know him from that show, or as the equally awkward Gary on Veep, will see that Hale is the lead here and think; ‘Oh, that makes sense.’

And yet, it really does. Hollywood is always casting actors more akin to Greek gods than humans as their ‘regular Joe’ leading men. Casting Tony Hale, whose specialty is awkward humour, and who you wouldn’t look twice at if you passed in the street, seems oddly subversive.

Brave New Jersey also deserves credit for not ultimately making the introverted mayor into a Rambo-esque action star. Clark is shouted down and vilified by the townspeople for advocating hiding from the ‘Martians’ rather than fighting them, but the movie doesn’t vilify him. As they are all charging off to fight an enemy that will never arrive, he is charging against the tide in order to play Lorraine the song that he’s composed, that he’s been too shy to share until that moment.

It’s an endearing sequence, played for laughs, but there’s something refreshing about a leading man whose introversion and sweetness are not defects that need to be fixed in order to truly earn the mantle of ‘hero’.

Comedic Core

Though, as we’ve seen, there is more to it, at its core Brave New Jersey is a comedy film. And a mighty successful one at that.

The film is peppered with little funny moments. During the ‘invasion’, the kids are sequestered safely in the school room. Every time someone knocks on the door, they all scream, as if they are expecting these marauding Martians to be so polite that they’d request permission to enter the room.

And of course, the fact that the townsfolk are so convinced that aliens would want to invade Lullaby in the first place yields its own laughs. “Of course they’re coming for us. We’ve got the fourth highest water tower in three counties!” says one person, without a hint of irony, at a town meeting.

Grizzled army veteran, Captain Ambrose P. Collins (Raymond J. Barry), is a reliable purveyor of colourful, comedic quotes. One-liners fall from his mouth like rain from a stormy sky. “I’ve seen things that’d make you shit a green carrot” is a phrase of his that I’m most definitely going to be borrowing.

In Conclusion

In recent years, it has become apparent that the astonishing reaction to Orson Welles‘s War Of The Worlds broadcast may well have been exaggerated. Not all that many people heard the radio show, and most of those who did, knew it wasn’t real. How disappointing.

This doesn’t take anything away from the tremendous heart and humour of Brave New Jersey. Writer/director Jody Lambert populates his film with varied, believable characters, and gives each of them a rewarding journey. Lambert doesn’t shy away from adding layers of pathos, but this is essentially an uplifting romp, led by a lovely, delicate performance from Tony Hale.

Truth may sometimes be stranger than fiction, but Brave New Jersey proves that fiction is a whole lot more fun.

Have you seen Brave New Jersey? What did you think?

Brave New Jersey is released on August 4th in the US. For all other release dates, click here.