The Comedy

I started watching a movie on Netflix the other night, things got out of hand, and now I have tape all over my face.

It was The Comedy, directed by Rick Alverson and starring Tim Heidecker as Swanson - a rich guy described as an "aging hipster". Now, I can't say I know much about hipsters, but I can say this guy drank a lot of Pabst and was the most bored person who ever did exist in time and space.

Swanson has a merry band of fellow aging hipster friends - Van Arman (Eric Wareheim), Cargill (Jeffrey Jensen), Ben (James Murphy) and Bobby (Neil Hamburger) - and when he isn't traipsing through Brooklyn with them, engaging in highly ironic and often upsetting activities (see the first few slow-mo minutes of this film) he is pelting unsuspecting strangers and acquaintances straight in the face with thoroughly disrupting questions and monologues, or hanging out on his boat shouting and tempting the ladies with his top-of-the-line PBR belly.

I suppose I went into this experience expecting it to be a movie version of Tim and Eric, Awesome Show, Great Job.  While there were moments of that, it really just felt like a Jim Jarmusch film about a man who often enjoyed eating those cream-filled cookies that were chocolate on one side, vanilla on the other who liked to provoke people about stuff like oh jeez, anuses and pretend he was an unholy mix of an old-timey plantation owner and Hitler.

It went nowhere more slowly than I've ever not gone someplace.

Twenty minutes into it, I had to stop myself from clobbering my face with the remote control. Halfway through, I was absolutely riveted. Soon after, I was just too damned irritated with the fact that I knew I'd walk away considering it brilliant.

"But what's it really about?" I hear you ask. I'm probably not smart enough to interpret, but if I had to hazard a guess, it's about being so jaded that you're willing to risk getting your ass thoroughly pummeled to see something interesting and novel happen. It's about falling for so long that you get sick of waiting to hit the ground, so you start punching yourself in the groin.

For me, it was like sitting in a doctor's office waiting for a vehemently late appointment while witnessing a hawk chewing on a human placenta - yet somehow remembering it as an enjoyable experience - in no small part because the piped-in music was the best soundtrack with which to curl into the fetal position with a glass of vodka.

Should you see it? Yes, if you enjoy being pecked to death by disconcerting situations and repellant behavior. I know I do.
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