Riddle of Fire

It’s no secret that there’s a dearth of films for kids. At the same time, there’s a shortage of films about what it means to be a kid. That time when every moment is tinged with magic, whether wondrous or scary, and forever means forever – or at least until the end of the day. Riddle of Fire, the sepia-tinged adventure from first-time filmmaker Weston Razooli, may be a little obtuse to really play well with bored kids. Yet for adults looking to strip away the rust of maturity, it will show them a little of that springtime gold underneath.

Its three protagonists come with the anarchic streak that is necessary to launch into bold adventures and harmless hijinks. Well, harmless unless determined young Alice (Ferro) and the A’Dale brothers, Jodie (Peters) and marble-mouthed Hazel (Stover), hit you with one of their blue paintballs before careening off into the evening on their dirt bikes. All they want to do is play the new video game they have acquired and no, don’t ask how. But their sick mother has locked the TV and told them they can only have the password if they can make her a blueberry pie, and to make the blueberry pie they must find speckled eggs, and to find the speckled eggs they must head into the woods.

Such is the stuff of high adventure, even if the threats they face aren’t dragons or goblins but grownups who frequent the dive bars of small town Wyoming. But then, what are we to make of their fantastical imaginations when they meet what seems to be a real witch (Tipton) and her mystically inclined daughter, Petal (Mote)?

It’s the best depiction of the carefree best of being a kid since the equally mundane yet imaginative I Declare War. But Razooli also brings the anarchic energy of being a child in a world of adults in the same off-kilter way that beloved juvenile adventures like The Apple Dumpling Gang pulled off (just swap moonshine-chugging hillbillies for 40-swigging thirtysomethings). He doesn’t try to edit around the performances by the amateur actor kids, but instead finds what they excel at – being kids. Ferro gives by far the most mature and rounded performance, which is to be expected since Alice is the Wendy of this endeavor. But the boys aren’t her brothers, they’re her friends: In fact, she’s married forever and ever to Jodie. Razooli takes us back to those days of awkward glances and muddy faces, of not wanting to dance and then dancing like that’s the only thing the world wants you to do, and that’s where Peters’s innocent performance lives. As for Stover, everybody knew that kid whose mouth fumbled words, so it’s all the more charming that Razooli didn’t try to fix his dialogue in post but instead adds golden-hued subtitles. (And full marks to Charles Halford as lummox John Redrye and Razooli himself as doofus Marty Hollyhock for bringing back the vintage harmless buffoon villains of yesteryear.) There is truly magic in this long, golden summer day.