Hey folks, Harry here to introduce to all you monkeys the latest in the long line of Robie Reports... And here he has two for ya... STARTUP.COM and HOT WET AMERICAN SUMMER, which he has a contrary opinion to the ones we've seen thus far. I hope he and Moriarty managed to see THE BELIEVER or CITIZEN TOXIE.... That'd rule! Here ya go...
The gal sitting next to me during Startup.com kept hissing at the screen, calling Kaleil Isaza Tusman, the CEO of Govworks.com, a jerk and a cocky asshole. Groan…some people just don’t get it, especially cloistered Hollywood hipsters. Kaleil is an ass because he’s got to be one; do you really think that a guy that’s heading up a babe of a company, that’s herding some 200 employees, that’s got investors that don’t quite understand the business they’re investing in breathing down his neck, do you believe this guy has time to worry about being cool?
Kaleil and partner Tom Herman, best friends since high school, start up the start up and the documentary Startup.com is about the company’s rise and fall. More accurately it’s about the growth of a dream, the growth of two men and the breakdown of their friendship. That directors Jehane Noujaim and Chris Hegedus don’t narrate the thing to death is a big point of strength. That the two directors have the guts to let giant jumps in time go by cut to cut – forcing the audience to figure out what has happened and making the realization that much more personal – shows that the talent Hegedus displayed in ’94 The War Room wasn’t fleeting.
The fear at the beginning of the movie is a big fat question of why. Why should we care about a couple of rich, late 20-somethings that are starting a company? Because Tom has the cutest daughter you’ve ever seen? No. That’s too cheap. You end up caring about the story because it evolves into a study not so much of a company destined to fail as a study of a friendship destined to fail. Startup.com is a warning to anyone blinding entering the dot com industry (though I think that naiveté died a year ago) and it’s a strong study in the sad reality many entrepreneurs face every day. The deeper lessons apply to everyone – not just the stodgy businessmen we like to make fun of because look at them, they’re stuck in a cubicle in a shit job working for the man. Dreams sometimes fail no matter how hard you try, and it’s the lesson Startup.com imparts sadly, desperately and well.
WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER
Wet Hot American Summer is the Happy, Texas of this year’s Sundance, a comedy that doesn’t work yet still is lavished with praise. Wet Hot simply isn’t funny enough. There are a few laughs here, but they’re fleeting. The tone is all over the place, the ideas are completely limp and the production is a giant waste of resources. This is the movie you’re going to hear that no talent, no taste executive type describe as caustically brilliant. I just heard a head-to-toe black clad agent man call it just that.
I actually kinda liked The State, the comedy group that had a short-lived show on MTV. Hell, I was one of six people in the Western Hemisphere that saw the State’s CBS special and one of five that laughed. At their best The State was clever and as hell and pulled off that tough trick of combining wit with, well, with fart jokes. Fine by me as long a I laugh. Wet Hot, though, is a string of bad skits, and near all the good actors here – David Hyde Pierce, Janeane Garofalo, Christopher Meloni and others – are wasted.
It’s a camp comedy. Actually it’s ostensibly a deconstruction of/love-letter to the camp comedy. The problem is that the film never follows up on the few good camp-goes-to-hell ideas and the non-stop unfunny schtick kills any sense of sweetness the movie musters. The humor is snide and sarcastic, and not in the fun, let’s fuck with the world kind of way.
The film is set in the early ‘80s. An 80s movie…aren’t we done finding goofy ‘80s stuff liked stripped socks and short shorts on guys funny? Dude it’s passe. It’s so goddamn passe. Janeane Garofalo is again playing the dowdy one that just doesn’t know how to date and deal with men. Isn’t that imaginative. Man, Janeane Garofalo is great looking and got a personality (at least the one she puts on in interviews) that can slay nations. That’s pretty fucking attractive you dolts. You want to be witty? How about casting against type. Hey, here’s a crazy idea for an indie movie; a guy falls in love with a girl named, say, Ganeane Jarofalo, even though she doesn’t look like Uma Thurman. She’s just a wonderful gal. What a fucking notion…
Wet Hot has a couple of great laughs but they all point at what the movie could have been and make the experience doubly frustrating. There’s the "counselors go to town" scene that turns the whole idea upside down, with the happy go lucky crew beating up old women and ending up strung out in a smack house. Funny, but why didn’t the rest of the movie strive for this kind of chaos?
If you’re going to put Molly Shannon in a movie, don’t relegate her to a lame one joke extended cameo in which she’s having a breakdown and must deal with her estranged husband. See, it’s funny because a little kid offers her advice and he talks like an adult. If you’re going to put Amy Poehler – an incredibly cute and incredibly funny girl – in a movie use her. Poehler has maybe six lines here. If you’re going to have a credits sequence use them. There are opportunities for more laughs there. Don’t just show guys and girls dancing around a campfire in slow-mo and in 80s gear. What’s the point? I should be laughing already and interested, not wondering why the director squandered an opportunity. If you’re going to play your comedy as broadly sarcastic you better have a big fat soul running down the middle of the movie. Take away that soul and you take away why anyone should ever give a shit. And if we don’t care, we don’t laugh. Simple as that.
John Elway out.
