The one thing worse than jazz music are comedies that just aren't fun or funny to watch.
It isn't all that hard to see what this movie was trying to achieve but it also isn't hard to see that it completely failed at it. Aside from its comedy, the problem with this movie is that it feels far too disjointed. It was trying to be a quirky comedy, featuring many different characters, each with their own individual story lines, all connected through Vincent D'Onofrio's pawn shop. That at least was what the movie was trying to do...
But in fact, none of the story lines ever feel connected though. It instead feels like a whole bunch of different segments, involving random characters, doing some very random and stupid stuff, that the movie expects you to laugh at. As a matter of fact, every segment feels like it got written by a completely different writer, taking on a different tone and approach. They feel that disconnected from each other but weird thing however is that the entire movie got written by one and the same person. Sorry Adam Minarovich! I'm just not a fan I guess. None of the story lines ever come together effectively and it all feels far too random and pointless really.
It's not just the story that's lacking but also the dialog and characters who are in it. You never get any back story, so it's hard to ever care for anyone in this movie and it doesn't help much that basically all of the characters got written as a bunch of douchebags. seriously, every character that you are supposed to like and laugh at, do some absolutely despicable things, at one point or another. It's basically a movie about douches being douches toward other douches. It draws most of its humor from this as well, which really isn't making this an either fun or funny one to watch.Besides another thing that annoyed me about this movie was its directing approach. It's trying to be too stylish at times, with its camera position and movements. It's actually something very distracting really, ever time the movie feels the need to swirl around or focuses on achieving the next hip cut and transition. Swirly cam attacks again! I seriously hope it won't become the next big trend for movies, just like the shaky cam became a few years back. I'm actually fine with the shaky cam but I'm already fed up with the swirly cam, even though I have seen it in only just a handful of movies, as of yet.
You seriously shouldn't be fooled by this movie its impressive cast list. It probably was just a quick and simply paycheck for the big name actors involved with this, since all of them are in it for just 15 minutes, at most. I doubt that most of them even met each other on set, since they never had to actually physically work together within this movie, which perhaps is also part of the reason why this movie feels so incredibly disjointed.
It's just not funny, not clever, not original, not worth your time. This movie really doesn't work! The style, the acting, the story, the characters, the comedy, the music, nothing ever comes together! It's as if every person involved was busy trying to make their own little movie, within this movie.
4/10
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You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. You want boring, locked down camera moves, go watch a Woody Allen film. Five years from now when this film is the massive cult hit it's destined to be, you'll be walking back all your negativity. This film is an example of real filmmaking craft. You deserve every crappy found footage piece of shaky cam garbage. Who cares about backstory? That's just something screenwriters and development execs throw at projects to justify their own existence in the creative food chain. I guess you missed all the Satanic subtext and suggestions that the entire town is purgatory and all the cool hidden visual gags about hell and the devil and so on. You obviously came in predisposed to hate and to be 'smarter' than this film. Sad.
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