IMDBSo I was piddling around the OnDemand as I am of a habit. My usual haunts are the Sundance and IFC freebies. I happened upon Visioneers. "Zack Galifinakis," I think to myself. I'll file this away and watch it before it expires. So last night it tells me it's going to expire at the end of the month. So, what the fuck? I give it a watch.
After watching, I can't decide if this is the best movie ever made, if I'm crazy, or what. I don't immediately think this is the actual best movie ever made, for sure. But it could be the best movie ever made in that tongue-in-cheek way. Which is to say that I'm probably overrating it because I literally have liquid schadenfreude running through my veins. I want this to be the best movie ever made, not because it's good, but because it's better than everything for which it is a parody - both in terms of the subject matter and the movie itself. That's what's called irony.
It's a parody of 1984. And it's a parody of what one 'reviewer' called 'pseudo-absurdist' comedy. Few of the people who review such things on the internet even got it. And upon careful consideration, I have determined that that must mean that it is in fact the greatest movie ever made.
It's better than 1984 because 1984 was built on the fears of the cold war. And those fears don't exist anymore, yet they persist in a segment of our society that in my humble opinion is very worthy of being parodied (ie my father). This is the obvious part. If you don't give it another thought, you could easily think it's merely absurd.
As far as actually being 'pseudo-absurdist...' I thought about that reviewer and his ilk panning this fine work (
40% on Rotten Tomatoes), and then I got it. These actual (not pseudo) douche-bags are supposed to be the experts. Yet time and time again they totally fuck up when something actually good comes along. It's not good in the traditional sense because it's making fun of that on purpose. And if you vote it down with pseudo-words you're just falling into the sarchasm. That's not pseudo absurdist. It's absurd. And you just threw in the pseudo part because you're an idiot who doesn't know what it means. Another reviewer called it banal. It's anything but. It's banal on purpose. And that's something different altogether, now, eh? Because how else does one make fun of something that's intentionally not banal and therefore even just by definition somewhat pretentious?
This is the kind of thing we weren't ready for when Andy Kaufman did it. And apparently we're still not ready for it. We don't like it, not because it isn't good (which, of course, by any traditional measure it isn't), but because its message is one we don't like to hear. It fucks up our day. It tells us, "Guess what asshole? You're not that interesting!" And in the strictest of terms, that's the truth. You're just a monkey with a nice place to poo. So why all the pretense, dickbag? When people have a negative reaction to things like this, it's like they're making an admission that they just don't really have a willingness to face their own mortality. It's like when a gay guy hits on you, and you freak out. Why are you so pissed? I'll give you a hint: The comedy isn't on the screen, it's in the audience.
e - which witch is which.
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