Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Visioneers
No hippie or agrarian Leftist shibboleth goes un-regurgitated in this tiresome, uninspired film. Zach Galifinakis, whose standup I like, wanders through the film, his character a cipher. That's the point, I suppose, but he's also a good visual representation of how much thought the screenwriter put into how most people actually live. Every note the film hits is a predictable and ham-fisted condemnation of what the filmmakers perceive as modern corporate life and consumer culture. And what the filmmakers perceive looks like it was informed by an exceptionally long and weed-filled freshman year dorm-room bull session. Films arising from those can be good, but usually take the form of something like "Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle".
The film's message seems to be "live every day like you're at Burning Man and have just had an epiphany", but the screenwriter doesn't seem to have thought for a second about how most people choose-and some people have-to live. Where and how one works can be a soul-crushing and difficult experience, but almost all work requires a compromise by the worker between what he'll tolerate, and for how much money.
I did enjoy the few points of the film which imply that the world we are watching is an Earth in a parallel Universe: the global mispronunciation of the word "chaos"; George's wife putting a clothespin on her nose instead of a BreatheRight strip; the implication that George Washington Winsterhammerman is a direct descendant of the founder of his country, who might also be named George Washington Winsterhammerman; the fact that flipping each other off is considered a greeting. But the notion of the movie taking place in a parallel Universe also undercuts the film's thesis, for if we're watching people from another world, what lessons should we draw from their plight? What else do we not know about them which might explain and perhaps justify their behavior? Both are interesting questions, which are ignored by the filmmakers.
Nothing the film has to to say about modern life is new, smart, or interestingly presented. For all of its many faults "American Beauty" was beautifully shot and often funny, and "Office Space" and "Idiocracy" made many of the same points with humor and without the air of moral superiority. Even the climax of the film, where the George is set to make one of two choices, manages to make either choice predictable, sapping it of tension. What the big boss writes on the back of a business card is also predictable (and so, so dumb). George's longsuffering and devoted, if dim, wife is also underwritten and dealt with fairly callously, as if her fate was unimportant simply because the screenplay no longer needed her to be a factor in the story.
If there is such a thing as paint-by-numbers counterculturalism, this film is it. ¶ 16:02
The film's message seems to be "live every day like you're at Burning Man and have just had an epiphany", but the screenwriter doesn't seem to have thought for a second about how most people choose-and some people have-to live. Where and how one works can be a soul-crushing and difficult experience, but almost all work requires a compromise by the worker between what he'll tolerate, and for how much money.
I did enjoy the few points of the film which imply that the world we are watching is an Earth in a parallel Universe: the global mispronunciation of the word "chaos"; George's wife putting a clothespin on her nose instead of a BreatheRight strip; the implication that George Washington Winsterhammerman is a direct descendant of the founder of his country, who might also be named George Washington Winsterhammerman; the fact that flipping each other off is considered a greeting. But the notion of the movie taking place in a parallel Universe also undercuts the film's thesis, for if we're watching people from another world, what lessons should we draw from their plight? What else do we not know about them which might explain and perhaps justify their behavior? Both are interesting questions, which are ignored by the filmmakers.
Nothing the film has to to say about modern life is new, smart, or interestingly presented. For all of its many faults "American Beauty" was beautifully shot and often funny, and "Office Space" and "Idiocracy" made many of the same points with humor and without the air of moral superiority. Even the climax of the film, where the George is set to make one of two choices, manages to make either choice predictable, sapping it of tension. What the big boss writes on the back of a business card is also predictable (and so, so dumb). George's longsuffering and devoted, if dim, wife is also underwritten and dealt with fairly callously, as if her fate was unimportant simply because the screenplay no longer needed her to be a factor in the story.
If there is such a thing as paint-by-numbers counterculturalism, this film is it. ¶ 16:02
