The Decade List: Funny Ha Ha (2002)

Funny Ha Ha - dir. Andrew Bujalski

It's so secret that the state of young American independent filmmaking is in sorry shape. The digital revolution hasn't yielded the surge of artful low-to-no-budget paragons the more optimistic film lovers had hoped. But in every trash heap, there's something of value to be extricated. For me (and many others), Andrew Bujalski's films are the salvageable ones. Lumped alongside young filmmakers of significantly less aptitude, Bujalski captures his generation with a rare skill. His subjects, the alienated lot of twentysomethings, stem from a very American cinematic tradition, one that's already grown tired thanks to some of Bujalski's peers. While his first film, Funny Ha Ha, doesn't reach the heights of his later Mutual Appreciation, it establishes Bujalski's vision in a cogent manner, which reaches further than most young filmmakers' admirable first exertions.

All of the filmmakers associated with the so-called "mumblecore" movement situate their characters within the same concurrent universe, but unlike most of the others (I'm sure you know who I'm specifically referring to), Bujalski is celebratory in the numbing mind state of his post-collegiates, acknowledging the humor of their seemingly overwhelming despair and ennui. In both Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation, every evening arrives like a box of mystery, laced with the possibility for excitement. In Funny Ha Ha, Marnie (Kate Dollenmayer), a girl both awkward and charming in her own right, stumbles upon a party of some guys she mistakenly thinks are friends of another friend's girlfriend, gets trashed, wakes up miserable and repentant. That misery dissipates because within this world the following day always holds that desirable potential. Watching Bujalski’s films unfold is like a small revelation, finding beauty in the confused path of his characters and allowing their misery to transpire, if only because it makes for brilliant humanity and, sometimes, exquisite comedy.

With: Kate Dollenmayer, Christian Rudder, Myles Paige, Andew Bujalski, Marshall Lewy, Lissa Patton Rudder, Justin Rice, Vanessa Bertozzi
Screenplay: Andrew Bujalski
Cinematography: Matthias Grunsky
Country of Origin: USA
US Distributor: Wellspring

Premiere: September 2002 (Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival)

Awards: Someone to Watch Award - Andrew Bujalski (Independent Spirit Awards)

You Move Me / Like Music

With the Saint Louis International Film Festival starting in just about ten days, I’ve got a stack of screeners I need to pile through which may keep my writing/blogging to a minimum in the upcoming week or so. However, I thought I’d throw a few unorganized thoughts about three films out there before I glue myself to the television. Firstly, I’ve seen the end of the so-called mumblecore movement/trend in the face of Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig’s Nights and Weekends. If the Duplass’ brothers Baghead showed even the faintest signs of progression, Nights and Weekends has solidified the “on the road to nowhere” fate of its contemporaries. It’s probably most disheartening that with the quickness in which Swanberg makes and releases his films, we haven’t even gotten to witness follow-ups from the two most skilled filmmakers of the movement, Andrew Bujalski (Mutual Appreciation) and Aaron Katz (Quiet City). With unfortunate backing from IFC (their website also showcases his webserial, which just proves that his work is even annoying in small doses), the end appears to have arrived. I wish I could see a progression of maturity or craft with each passing, now-indistinguishable Swanberg film I see, but instead, I find just the opposite. With each stroke swinging in the very same direction, my tolerance diminishes at alarming rates.

On the flip-side, Arnaud Desplechin is a director who has taken a turn for the better. Coming from tepid feelings about his English-language Esther Kahn and wildly mixed feelings for Kings & Queen (Rois et reine), he’s refined just about everything in his latest, A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël). Kings & Queen certainly brought him to the attention of the film elite, as most people agreed that the film’s faults made for better cinema than most director’s successes. In A Christmas Tale, he retools his more daring decisions into absolute magnificence. The camera addresses, the fades, the lengthy running time… all seem less the product of an ambitious director than a director who truly knows what the fuck he’s doing. I couldn’t help but think of Jules and Jim during the film’s early moments with Desplechin’s joyous pacing and energy, all of which are matched by the amazing Mathieu Amalric and Emmanuelle Devos, both regulars for the director. Melvil Poupaud, one of the few actors in the film who hadn’t worked with Desplechin prior, is also remarkable, emitting the ferocity that Christophe Honoré keeps trying (and failing) to get out of both himself and Louis Garrel.

Though I can’t recommend A Christmas Story any higher, I’ve also found myself rather smitten with Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, of which I haven’t gotten the chance to speak properly yet. Though most talk of the film surrounds Anne Hathaway, I almost feel all the Oscar buzz (I hate that term) for her performance as a recovering addict is overshadowing the fact that the film is quite wonderful. Yeah, she’s good, but she’s playing the role that actors wet dream about; as the titular Rachel, Rosemarie DeWitt takes on the bigger challenge as the thankless, “normal” sister and is absolutely radiant. But enough about the actors, Rachel Getting Married, like A Christmas Tale, moves in a way that seems so absent in cinema these days. While orchestral in some ways, A Christmas Tale resembles a brilliant novel, one whose small decisions and characterizations illuminate the delicacies of the tale at hand. On the other side, I couldn’t help but hear PJ Harvey’s voice in the song “Rope Bridge Crossing” while watching Rachel Getting Married (“you move me / like music”). Demme displays, at once, a swarming opus, the first time he’s been able to convey this in his fiction work after Heart of Gold, Stop Making Sense and music videos for New Order, Bruce Springsteen and The Pretenders. Of course, it would then make sense that TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe would play DeWitt’s fiancée, in addition to small appearances by Fab 5 Freddy and Robyn Hitchcock. It’s been too long since a film has hypnotized me by its rhythm.

The Saint Louis International Film Festival 2008

For all of those living in the ‘Lou, the 17th Annual Saint Louis International Film Festival line-up has been announced for the dates of Nov. 13-23. Although you can check out the schedule in pdf form here, I thought I might point out some of the more exciting inclusions this year. SLIFF will be awarding writer/director Paul Schrader a Lifetime Achievement Award and will screen his latest film Adam Resurrected, starring Jeff Goldbum, Willem Dafoe, Moritz Bleibtreu and Derek Jacobi, as well as a restored print of Mishima: A Life in Four Parts. Following the screening of Adam Resurrected, LA Weekly film editor Scott Foundas will have a Q&A with the director.

A “Micro-Budget Filmmaking Seminar” will be conducted on the 15th at 11 am at the Tivoli. Mary Bronstein, who co-starred in Ronald Bronstein’s Frownland and whose directorial debut Yeast will be screened during the fest, is going to be one of the participants, as well as Missouri native Blake Eckard (Sinner Come Home) and St. Louisan Aaron Coffmann (Texas Snow). In addition to Bronstein’s Yeast, another mumblecore flick, Nights and Weekends, written, directed and starring Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig will also be screening at this year’s fest.

Humboldt County co-directors Darren Grodsky and Danny Jacobs, both hailing from Saint Louis, are also making an appearance this year with a Q&A and after-party which opens the festival. The film, which premiered at this year’s SXSW fest and was just recently distributed theatrically by Magnolia, stars Fairuza Balk, Peter Bogdanovich, Frances Conroy, Brad Dourif and Chris Messina.

Steven Soderbergh’s absent-on-DVD King of the Hill, which was set and shot in Saint Louis, will be featured in a panel discussion about the translation from the book to film. There’s also going to be a film noir seminar, following a screening of Joseph Losey’s The Prowler (his last film shot in the US and also unavailable on DVD in the US). The panel will include noir expert Eddie Muller and actress Marsha Hunt, who was blacklisted from Hollywood. And rounding up the special events is a Q&A with Michael Apted (the Up! series), recipient of this year’s Maysles Brothers Lifetime Achievement Award in Documentary, conducted by Cinema Saint Louis executive director Cliff Froehlich. His latest film, The Power of the Game, will also screen this year.

And onto the big gals of this year’s fest. Darren Aronofsky’s Venice and Toronto winner The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood and Judah Friedlander, will close the fest before the film makes its theatrical run in the middle of December. Palme d’Or winner The Class (Entre les murs), from writer/director Laurent Cantet, is also screening on the 22nd.

Philippe Claudel’s I’ve Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t’aime), starring Kristin Scott-Thomas and Elsa Zylberstein as sisters, will also screen on closing night before it hits local theatres soon. Bent Hamer’s O’ Horten is also showing, after receiving a number of praises when it played at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Danny Boyle’s crowd-pleaser of a film, Slumdog Millionaire, will play on the 15th.

Kelly Reichardt’s much anticipated follow-up to Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, which stars Michelle Williams, is also set for the 17th. I should mention that Wendy and Lucy is probably my most anticipated film to premiere at SLIFF this year. The new film from Rian Johnson (Brick), The Brothers Bloom, is playing on the 22nd. The film, which will make its limited theatrical run beginning 19 December from Summit Entertainment, stars Rachel Weisz, Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Robbie Coltrane and Rinko Kikuchi, whom you should remember as the jumper-lifting deaf girl from Babel.

As for the hot docs, Terence Davies’ Of Time and the City will screen on the 15th. I wish I could remember who exactly said it, but someone, via GreenCine Daily, called the film the real masterpiece of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir, which also premiered at Cannes and will be Israel’s official submission for next year’s foreign language Oscar, will also be spotlighted on the closing day of the festival.

As for a few smaller films to pay attention to, I’ve read some wonderful things about Aditya Assarat’s Wonderful Town, from Thailand, which will play on the 18th. Marco Bellocchio’s The Wedding Director (Il regista di matrimoni), which stars Sergio Castellitto of Va savoir, The Last Kiss and Mostly Martha, screens on the 20th and 22nd. Beloved director Giuseppe Tornatore (whom, as you should know, I quite despise) has his most recent film, The Unknown Woman (La sconsciuta), set for the 14th and 15th. Reha Erdem’s Times and Winds, which is one of two films I’ve seen prior to the fest, is playing on the 15th. Nic Balthazar’s Ben X, the other film I’ve already seen, is playing on the 21st and 22nd. It should be mentioned that I much preferred Times and Winds to Ben X.

Director John Boorman’s (The General, Deliverance) The Tiger’s Tail, which stars Brendan Gleeson, Kim Cattrall, Ciarán Hinds and Sinéad Cusack, will screen on both the 19th and 20th. Nacho Vigalondo’s sci-fi/horror film Timecrimes (Los cronocrímenes) will screen on the 19th, before Magnolia’s Magnet Releasing puts it in theatres sometime in December. According to the schedule, David Cronenberg is set to return to his horror roots and remake the film. The schedule also reports that Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in), which screens on the 15th and is also going to be released by Magnet, is also getting a Hollywood remake (although much less exciting as it's to be directed by the asshole who made Cloverfield).

Eric Guirado’s The Grocer’s Son (Le fils de l’épicier) is going to play on the 16th and 17th. The film, which stars Nicolas Cazalé and Clotilde Hesme (Love Songs), was reported through IndieWire as being Film Movement’s highest grossing film in their existence. Also from France is Nicolas Klotz’s The Heartbeat Detector (La question humaine), which screens on the 18th and 19th, starring Mathieu Amalric. For those who can’t make it, New Yorker released the DVD back in July. Yang Li’s Blind Mountain, which hits DVD from Kino in January, will play on the 14th. And finally, Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort, which was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Academy Award for Israel this year, will show on the 21st and 23rd (although Kino released the DVD at the end of September).

I should be seeing a number of these films before the festival goes underway, so if any of the films happen to strike me, I’ll be sure to point you in their direction.

Short Cuts 22 March 2008

Here's an update of what I've been watching in the past few days.

The Witnesses [Les témoins] - dir. André Téchiné - 2007 - France

The Witnesses is uncharacteristically swiftly-paced for an André Téchiné film, particularly one that deals with what I'd like to call a love trapezoid during the course of an entire year in the early 80s. Like his previous Wild Reeds and Strayed, he treats The Witnesses like an epic war romance, crafting the AIDS crisis into une guerre, told from the point-of-view of an apathetic mother and wife (Emmanuelle Béart) whose husband (Sami Bouajila) is sleeping with a young boy (Johan Libéreau, of Cold Showers) who comes down with signs of what we now know as AIDS. Though successful in its own right, the film ultimately lacks the overall heartbreak of Wild Reeds and the simply stunning nature of Rendez-vous. Try not to pay attention to Béart's plastic surgery face and lips (or the fact that an American character who shows up near the end is clearly not from the United States).

Them [Ils] - dir. David Moreau, Xavier Palud - 2006 - France/Romania

Note to foreign directors who've made a successful horror film in their native country: don't come to America. Now, I'm not outright banning anyone from coming, but Hollywood has been recruiting foreign directors for their shitty remakes for the past few years (see The Hills Have Eyes, The Grudge 2, Hitman), and now we have the directors of Them to blame for The Eye. Them is actually pretty creepy (which is something I've heard The Eye certainly is not), but it feels more like a suspense demo reel than it does an actual film. It's tense and eerie, but empty and meaningless. Thankfully at seventy-seven minutes, it's hard not to at least applaud the directors for favoring old-fashioned terror over merciless gore.

It's My Party - dir. Randal Kleiser - 1996 - USA

It's been AIDS week at my house, first with The Witnesses and then It's My Party. It's My Party is pretty indisputably bad, but I can't bring myself to despise it. The film represents a specific era of time in which AIDS irrevocably changed the lives of everyone around it. In It's My Party, a brain tumor begins to eat away at Eric Roberts (whose casualness about dying gets grating after a while) after years of suffering from AIDS. Instead of dying in a hospital, he throws himself a "going-away" party with his close family and friends, including Lee Grant as his Greek mother, Marlee Matlin as his sister, Olivia Newton-John, Bronson Pinchot and Margaret Cho as his best friends, and George Seagal as his estranged father, among others. I can't really call It's My Party hokey because, in a way, it's authentic; its subject matter is too desperate to be easily dismissed even if it's constructed by lousy filmmaking. Just look at it as a brave aritfact.

Hannah Takes the Stairs - dir. Joe Swanberg - 2007 - USA

Grumblecore. Mumblecorpse. Those are two words that I couldn't resist using in reference to Joe Swanberg's Hannah Takes the Stairs, the ultimate test of my patience in a long time. In yet another depiction of post-college life, Swanberg introduces Hannah (Greta Gerwig), an emotionally confused serial dater who blows through the hearts and lives of three men (Mark Duplass of The Puffy Chair, Andrew Bujalski of Mutual Appreciation and Kent Osborne) throughout the course of the film. With Hannah Takes the Stairs, Swanberg best identifies the dead-end nature of the so-called mumblecore movement, crafting a film that's barely distinguishable in maturity or even in terms of plot devices from his previous Kissing on the Mouth and LOL. I could go on, but I'm remaining tight-lipped on this one.

Céline and Julie Go Boating [Céline et Julie vont en bateau] - dir. Jacques Rivette - 1974 - France

Oh, joy. Add these ladies to my list of all-time favorites. It's easy to see how David Lynch might have gotten inspiration for, well, just about all of his films from Céline and Julie, but seldom has surrealism seemed as playful and enchanting as it has here. I would suggest you go out of your way to find this film if you haven't already seen it, and thanks to both Eric and Ed for their incessant Jacques Rivette masturbation sessions or I might have missed out. A fucking incomparable masterpiece.

Suffering

I have been trying to write a number of posts over the weekend, but both a cold and writer's block have gotten the best of me, so I'll keep this brief. Benten Films announced their third DVD release, Todd Rohal's The Guatemalan Handshake starring Will Oldham, for 29 April. The new studio continues their streak of releasing American cinema from young, unique voices. That's all for now.

Mumble and Silence

Benten Films has announced their second DVD release, two films by Aaron Katz: Quiet City and Dance Party USA. Following in the footsteps of their first release LOL, Katz's films also fit into the mumblecore subgenre that the kids like so much. The set, which includes both titles, will be released 29 January.

I also neglected to mention Strand's pending release of Apitchatpong Weerasethekul's Syndromes and a Century for the 15th of January when I did my round-up of the notable releases announced for 2008. The film made small rounds across the country this past summer, and I hear it's wonderful. This is coming from someone who loved Tropical Malady so much he just about foamed at the mouth.

Despair and the glory of Tilda Swinton

Stephanie Daley - dir. Hilary Brougher - 2006 - USA

I suppose everyone has those actors that will make them watch the dumbest shit just because of their presence. As you probably already know, Parker Posey is one of them (and, yes, I did see Josie and the Pussycats, thank you); well, Tilda Swinton is another. Here, Swinton stars as forensic psychologist with a little bun in her oven. She’s asked to take on the case of the town’s infamous Ski Mom, or the title character played by Amber Tamblyn, who threw her baby in the dumpster after giving birth at three months. The film has a very Atom Egoyan feel, particularly in its wintery setting, reminiscent of The Sweet Hereafter, and like The Sweet Hereafter, the film unfolds in a non-linear fashion, with Swinton and Tamblyn’s sessions being the backbone of the film. As usual, Swinton is phenomenal, an actress who always gives you more than you think is expected of her, from simple glances to astonishing reactions and gestures. She also has this icy beauty about her that makes it quite difficult to take your eyes off. Though she played the Snow Queen in that shitty Chronicles of Narnia film, Swinton still embodies a rich humanity that such “respected” actress (like Nicole Kidman or Jodie Foster, for example) could barely muster. Tamblyn is a surprising match to Swinton, in case you’re wondering; she’s far more gifted an actress than, say, Ellen Page or Evan Rachel Wood. Regrettably, Stephanie Daley falls for the shitty Perfect Murder “meat thermometer motif” (which my father coined, in reference to that dreadful remake of Dial M for Murder, where, in one scene, a seemingly useless meat thermometer is placed annoying in center frame and later used as a murder weapon). Thankfully, it’s subtle ironies and coincidences resonate to a certain level that’s beautifully unexpected.

Funny Ha Ha - dir. Andrew Bujalski - 2002 - USA

Though I hate the genre-label “mumblecore” that’s been coined for Bujalski’s breed of Cassavetes/Woody Allen Jr. cinema, I can safely say that he’s probably one of the most talented young filmmakers working in America today. Funny Ha Ha, his first film, falls slight of his later Mutual Appreciation, which is as close to perfection as any film I’ve seen in the past year, but not grudgingly so. As the lead Marnie (probably not a coincidental nod to Hitchcock), Kate Dollenmayer is hypnotic, a girl both awkward and charming in her own right. Though Bujalski’s characters lives take place at the same time as those of Chicago’s Joe Swanberg (Kissing on the Mouth and LOL), his films exceed Swanberg’s by acknowledging the humor of the characters’ overwhelming despair. Whereas Swanberg is whiney, Bujalski is celebratory in the numbing mind state of the post-collegiate. Every evening is a box of mystery and potential excitement, wandering around the streets of Boston, stumbling across a party of some guys you think are friends of your other friend’s girlfriend, and waking up, miserable, regretful. Watching Bujalski’s films unfold is like a small revelation, finding beauty in the confused path of his characters and allowing their misery to transpire, if only because it makes for brilliant humanity and, sometimes, exquisite comedy.

The Boss of It All (Direktøren for det hele) - dir. Lars Von Trier - 2006 - Denmark/Sweden/Iceland

Office comedies aren’t the hardest to come by, and if you’re like most people I know, you’ll probably judge any one you see on either Office Space or the US Office (if you do either, we probably don’t see eye-to-eye). Not surprisingly, I have a closer affinity to the BBC Office and that Toni Collette/Parker Posey film Clockwatchers, but regardless, an office comedy isn’t simply that when it’s coming from Lars von Trier. I may reprimand him for abandoning his USA Trilogy for this, but I can’t complain too much when he provides me with a film like The Boss of It All. Perpetual “nice-guy” Ravn (Peter Gantzler) hires inept actor Kristoffer (Jens Albinus) to pose as the boss of the law firm he secretly owns to push the blame of the company’s selling off on someone else. Kristoffer, unaware of what’s really going on, serves as the so-called “boss of it all,” interacting with the core members of the staff, clueless to who exactly he’s supposed to be. The film is hilariously high-concept, but the narrator (voiced by Von Trier himself) allows the questionably sincere apology at the end of the film: “Sorry if you expected more or any less…” I think it’s gotten to the point that even when Von Trier isn’t on top of his game (Manderlay), I will still revel devilishly in his sadism. Iben Hjejle (High Fidelity, Mifune), as a woman convinced she can cure “the boss of it all” of his false homosexuality, and Jean-Marc Barr (Dogville, Don’t Let Me Die on a Sunday), as a team member who apparently doesn’t know how to speak Danish, are both wonderful in supporting roles.

Princesas - dir. Fernando León de Aranoa - 2005 - Spain

Other than maybe Pedro Almodóvar, melodrama is not something that contemporary filmmakers can pull off. In Princesas, we get the story of a down-on-her-luck hooker Caye (the phenomenal Candela Peña, of All About My Mother), who’s saving up her money to get a new pair of tits, perhaps in order to compete with the growing number of illegal immigrants selling their ass for half as much. Though she keeps it a secret from her fellow Spanish-bred whores, Caye befriends South American hooker Zulema (Micaela Nevárez), a woman saving up money to bring her mother and young son to Spain. What’s refreshing about Princesas is that it’s what I like to call a sunshine melodrama. The majority of the film takes place during the day, with the sun shining over the area where all the hookers convene. Certainly, awful things happen, but the director handles them lightly, shying away from gratuitous violence and close-up agony. The two women cry a lot, but they do so in a way that makes you wonder if what’s coming over them isn’t just a mixture of emotions and overwhelming confusion. What also makes Princesas so lovely is that the major benefactor in Caye’s dejection (her mobile going off at the most inopportune times) could be completely avoided by one small factor: if she learned how to put her fucking cell-phone on silent. We allow this error to slide, because it provides for the stunning despair of our two exceptional actresses.

Shadows

Though I have hardly had any time lately for writing solely for this blog, I must extend an extremely enthusiastic recommendation for Andrew Bujalski's Mutual Appreciation. This Cassavetes-meets-Jarmusch-minus-the-hip-factor has certainly made the rankings of the best films of last year, along Children of Men, Volver, and United 93 (and has officially gotten me to bump Pan's Labyrinth, the mistake of my list, off the top 10). Netflix it, and thank me later.

Puff This: A Personal Response/Attack for The Puffy Chair

The Puffy Chair - dir. Jay Duplass - 2005 - USA

First off, I hate the fucking adjective "puffy." Secondly, this is going to be a very personal response to the film, as I find arguing for or against its dramatic leanings to be uninteresting. So, if you had read the slew of positive reviews of The Puffy Chair online or during the trailer, you would probably be reminded that the digital film movement was supposed to offer a fresh alternative to the mediocrity of Hollywood. A lot of these critics claimed that The Puffy Chair was arguably one of the first to really do so, as other digital cinematic ventures had failed to really stick in people's minds (Tadpole, Personal Velocity, The Anniversary Party... and many others you've already forgotten). The low cost and accessibility of digital was going to make it possible for the little guys and girls whose cock-sucking skills didn't match their talent to make new, bold, real films. No longer do you need to be the casting couch cliché for the Weinsteins; you can just make a film with a bunch of your friends and hardly spend a dime. The Puffy Chair is the first feature-length narrative from the Duplass brothers (director Jay and writer/actor Mark), a remarkably obnoxious and tedious road film/intimate character study. First, we have Josh (Duplass), a former musician, current show-booker. It's his father's birthday, and he's bought a giant, mauve recliner off ebay, one similar to the chair his father used to have. He's got a girlfriend, Emily (Kathryn Aselton), a "sweet-natured" attention whore, waiting for Josh to turn into her Prince Charming. After severely pissing off his prima donna girlfriend, Josh invites her on the road-trip he'd planned to take alone, with an eye-rolling homage to that scene in Say Anything, pictured above. Then, we have Josh's brother, Rhett (Rhett Wilkins), who also decides to join the road trip, much to Emily's dismay. Fights ensue, high drama explodes, not without a few bumps in the road.

The Duplass brothers present their characters as someone like Woody Allen or a show like Six Feet Under might, exposing their deep character flaws, in addition to their admirable traits, in order to achieve some sort of three-dimensional truth. One thing they don't realize is that when a film is so utterly surface-level as The Puffy Chair is, the audience has no fun watching annoying fucking characters. We see scenes of Josh and Emily talking in goofy, cutesy voices to one another, showing us moments in a relationship that we rarely see onscreen and to which we can relate. This is fine, in my book, even if it is sort of queasy to watch, but to have us, a willing participant on this road trip, endure the obnoxiousness of their characters is just plain rude. When your film is all surface, let me like your characters, or, better yet, make me fascinated by them. Josh is the only excusable character here, perhaps because he seems the typical antihero of these sorts of films. Emily is grating, to say the least, and Rhett is a drag. Like I said, I can understand the purpose of putting "man" or "dude" at the end of every line of dialogue, but do I really want to see that? Do I really want to choose to join in on the roadtrip when I hate the people I'm traveling with... and don't really care where we're going? Sure, I'm being super personal with this film, but when something has nothing beneath the surface or between the lines to offer me, I can hardly bring myself to say anything perceptive or intelligent.