Taking a final snapshot with the historic Paramount in the background, moments before catching a final cab back to my hotel, to commemorate my SXSW 2009 experience.
My final screening at the Paramount (which, aside from having poor sight-lines, is glorious) was first on the day’s agenda. Lynn Shelton’s Humpday claimed two easy-to-garner SXSW titles: Best Movie I Saw on Day 7 and Best Mumblecore Movie at the Festival (unless you include True Adolescents). While hardly remarkable when judged by itself, the film boasts several funny moments and a unique look at certain heterosexual males’ perplexedly fascinated attitude towards homoeroticism that made it seem like a masterpiece compared to the two movies I saw afterwards. The basic premise: Ben (Mark Duplass, also seen in True Adolescents) is a thirtysomething who has already settled down into a quiet life with his lovely wife Anna (Alycia Delmore). But he begins to question whether taking the domestic route was the right choice when old, scraggly buddy Andrew (Joshua Leonard) shows up in the middle of the night looking for a place to bunk, only to take him partying the next day. Ben finds the youthful scene he left behind for marriage to be alluring, and soon enough he’s high as a kite. Loaded, he and Andrew proclaim to their hippie-dippy counterparts that they’re going to make a gay porn movie and enter it into competition at the popular local sex festival, Humpday. Instead of forgetting about the idea when they’ve sobered up, though, the two only further commit, almost as if it would be emasculating to not live up to the challenge.
For once, the mumblecore style really fits the material—OK, maybe it worked in the Duplasses’ Baghead, too—but not in the way one might expect. Humpday works on meta level, as if writer/director Lynn Shelton and the cast are making fun of their commitment to the understated genre, which proves so unwavering that they even use it to tell this outrageous story. The tactic pays off immensely. For instance, had a pivotal scene in which Anna learns of her now-aspiring filmmaker husband’s plan been handled in an overbearing, desperate-for-laughs manner, it would’ve fell flat. The deathly serious, nearly sublime tone Humpday instead opts for proves hilarious. When Ben and Andrew finally book a hotel room and get down to business, the experience reaches an uncomfortably comic crescendo. Both Shelton and her deadpan actors, especially the where-did-they-get-this-guy Joshua Leonard and the terrified-looking Alycia Delmore, are responsible for maintaining the delicate balance of comedy and bizarre realism.
Unfortunately, the usual misgivings of mumblecore pictures still apply to Humpday, even if it’s better than the average genre-entry. When the humor falls flat—namely in the first act when Ben first indulges in the party scene and in the second when Ben and Andrew constantly debate whether they should go through with the porno or not—the token style seems as boring and phony as it has ever been. Despite its many brilliant moments, Humday also has a tendency to look and feel like a bad student-film, as mumblecore efforts all-too-frequently do. Yes, Shelton’s film is entertaining enough on the whole that it left me more optimistic about the genre and its core-players than I was during the bulk of the festival, but I still doubt that it ultimately has much to say. Humpday touches on a few fascinating themes about masculinity and has its share of laughs, but one would be hard pressed to argue there’s enough substance there that it was worth making the film in the first place. 2 ½ Buckets out of 4.
As the day wore on, the movies got worse. In fact, my final two SXSW reviews will be pretty short given that neither film is likely to have a sizable theatrical release, if one at all. But, hey, Austin was alive and kickin’—bright sunshiney days and loud music coming from every which direction tend to attract the 6th Street Crowd—and I couldn’t have been happier knowing my first SXSW was a resounding success no matter what my schedule had in store. (Short of a widespread chemical attack on the U.S., that is.) Back to the Alamo Ritz I went to finish my fest.
The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle is a strange little movie that, it seems, exists for the sole purpose of being “quirky” (read: “annoying”). The story follows Dory (Marshall Allman), who takes a job as a janitor after getting fed up with his desk-hound gig doing data-entry. One of the offices that his new company cleans tests food products, and they often use the janitors as guinea pigs for new creations. One day, Dory and co-workers innocently munch on self-warming cookies designed to taste like they’re fresh from the oven. They don’t expect the array of side-effects that propel the movie’s plot, from cookie-withdrawal to… well, pooping out a colorful little creature.
At times, The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle is amusing because of its sheer wackiness. But on the other hand, does anybody need to see another movie that seeks to get by on wackiness alone? Shouldn’t that remain the role of big-budget, zero-substance Hollywood productions that are transparent in their emptiness, not independent films that should, by design, offer something deeper? In a way, “indies”—much as I detest grouping everything low-budget into one category—need to be more interesting and more original than box-office giants if they want to continue to make headway in growing a well-deserved audience. As often as the concept of The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle lends itself to inventive visuals—writer/director David Russo’s history is in animated shorts—the one-dimensional ill-effects of imaginary test-cookies don’t make for interesting and original material. The movie may seem ballsy upon first glance, but viewers will quickly discover that this emperor has no clothes. 2 Buckets out of 4.
How exactly first-time writer/director Judith Krant’s Made in China won this year’s SXSW Narrative Jury Prize is beyond me. (I could also phrase this in a more direct way: What the heck were you thinking, judges Scott Foundas, Ted Hope, and Kim Voynar?) I’d be willing to bet the reason rests in the many ways this tale of an idealistic young inventor who’s duped by those promising him fame and fortune parallels the causes of the current worldwide economic crisis. But I found the movie’s attempts to be humorous and politically relevant rather banal, their topicality notwithstanding. Yes, Made in China was an ambitious attempt for a first feature in that it was shot on location in Shanghai, but that doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t a good movie.
The focal inventor is Johnson (Jackson Kuehn), who’s more annoying than he is charismatic, and he’s confident that a certain “humorous domestic hygiene product”—revealed in one of the film’s few genuinely funny moments—will make him a fortune. He lives with his mom and sister in East Texas, where he can’t find any investors despite several vigorous pitches to locals. In order to make his dream a reality, Johnson travels to China, where he plans to meet a business man who agrees to fund the product over the Internet. Unfortunately for Johnson, the guy was just looking to run away with the hefty deposit he demanded upfront, failing to book the hotel room he promised Johnson or show up for the restaurant-meeting where Johnson planned to discuss production. In a twist of fate, Johnson meets the successful Magnus (Dan Sumpter), who agrees to help him. But this isn’t just any old favor; Johnson will have to live up to his half of the deal. Ya think more financial ruin might be in store for the naïve American?
That all sounds good and dandy on paper, but the film’s obnoxious, slapstick style undoes the relevance of the material. Had Made in China been written as a full-on farce, then it might have been funny, but its attempts to bring humor out of the farcical elements of the plot’s all-to-real Ponzi-scheme come off as obnoxious and unwatchable. This is probably because Johnson is such an unsympathetic loser that he practically deserves to be gamed, making it impossible to laugh at otherwise-funny sequences like the one in which all of his ludicrous invention-ideas are shown. Not to mention, Johnson’s idiocy kind of defeats his ability to parallel those good people whose lives have recently been destroyed by economic corruption. Made in China probably would have been more successful had it attempted a more serious tone, but even that seems like an idea better suited for a superiorly written film with actual production value. SXSW Award Winner or not, this juvenile attempt at humor and sociopolitical pertinence totally misses the mark. 1 Bucket out of 4.
And with that, my official coverage of the 2009 South by Southwest Film Festival is complete. In the event that my 10,000+ words on the event left you hungry for more, then you’re in luck: sometime during the next few months, I’ll chime in with reviews of three more films I was sent/will be receiving on DVD screeners, but for whatever reason wasn’t able to watch before SXSW’s end. They are: Best Worst Movie, a documentary on the making of the cult-classic Troll II; Pontypool, a Canadian zombie flick from the director of the Ellen Page starrer The Tracy Fragments; and Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo, a look at the Oklahoma convicts who participate in “penitentiary rodeos.” Stay tuned.
In closing, I’d just like to once again highlight the films from SXSW that I highly recommend you go see when they (hopefully) play at a theater near you. In alphabetical order: Breaking Upwards; The Eyes of Me; Grace; The Hurt Locker; I Love You, Man; Lake Mungo; Me and Orson Welles; Moon; Observe and Report; Severe Clear; Sin Nombre; The Slammin’ Salmon; That Evening Sun; and True Adolescents. These movies, plus a half-dozen more that will play just fine on DVD, made my first SXSW experience an unforgettable way to spend my spring break. I can only hope that next year, everything will click again and I will be back in Austin in full-force.
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