I got to watch this at SXSW (3-11-06), and it was certainly a breath of fresh air. Most mainstream movies are glazed over with frosting. A lot of indie movies seem to stress unnecessarily long scenes with witty sarcasm. Jumping Off Bridges seemed to contain neither of those elements, because life isn't the way it is in movies.
The technical aspects of the movie are easy to handle. The costumes certainly looked real. When I saw the dad in his classroom, I giggled because everyone one of my math teachers dressed just the same. No one in the movie had hip, trendy clothes, and none of them looked alike. The neighborhood that everyone lived in was very much a normal neighborhood. Most movies seem to want to have everyone live in $200,000 homes where everyone has expensive cars and an endless supply of money. The students weren't driving Hummers, Lexus', or Range Rovers. The camera-work was pretty decent, coming from a photographer who pays extra attention to cropping, angles, lighting situations, depth of field, etc. The sound was also very good, especially the original music -- I love piano. The editing was also very good, coming from an editor who also pays close attention to editing in movies.
If you want movies like The Notebook, Forest Gump, Dumb and Dumber, crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, then you won't like this movie.
If you want movies like Pieces of April, Broken Flowers, I Am Sam (Sean Pess should have won the Oscar that year), then you will probably like this movie.
