Reno 911!: Miami

Robert Ben Garant, USA, 2007
1.5 out of 4 stars

This is of course one of those films that defeats criticism, if only in the sense that when you say it’s bad, people who are likely to agree with you say “no duh, why did you watch that anyway?” while people who disagree with you will call you names like “elitist,” or tell you that it’s supposed to be dumb. Admittedly I am not a big fan of stupidity for its own sake, but I have found the show fairly entertaining in small doses – if you’re not familiar with it, it centers around really idiotic and obscene police officers in Reno, sort of a broad Cops parody with a strong basis in improv.

I think it’s pretty clear that there was no real chance of the material being made into a good film, as the people involved just don’t seem to have the discipline for it. One bit that really struck me was an extended sequence in which successive interactions consistently had an awkward dissolve transition as the editor had to skip over the unsuccessful improvisations the actors had probably stumbled through. I could go on about other ways in which this film was poorly thought-out or shoddily made, but the main point is that, for the most part, it was not particularly funny. The best praise I can give is that I didn’t really think that much about how bad or pointless it was until afterwards; I wasn’t really enjoying it, but neither was I angry about how bad it was (and that is saying something, with me)

Source: Charter VOD
10 Jan, 9:13 PM

Ali G Indahouse

Mark Mylod, UK / France / Germany, 2002
2.5 out of 4 stars

I was enjoying myself during the larger part of this movie’s running time, so I figured that I would give it a good rating. However, as I sat down to review it, I increasingly felt defeated by the film in my attempt to assess its quality, as if the idea of “quality” didn’t really apply to a film like this. It’s a lot easier when you’re just repelled by an often-disgusting, plotless film just as this, in which case you can dismiss it as dreck or whatever. I started to wonder if I even wanted to continue “reviewing” films here, considering that movie-watching is taking up less of my time lately, but some kind words from friends encouraged me to continue on, reviewing this film quite a while after the fact.

So, is this a good movie? No, although neither is it an awful film. Perhaps this is splitting hairs, but it’s possible to enjoy a movie even though it is not very good, although I will say that if the whole film had been funny, I probably would rate it higher. I think it starts off fairly strong, particularly in the south-central Los Angeles fantasy scene, and in the scenes in Ali G’s hometown of Staines. It starts to show the cracks around the time Ali makes it to Parliament, and, strangely, becomes less and less funny as it tries to put together a plot near the end. Everything is capped off with a protracted closing sequence that isn’t even remotely amusing.

You see, unlike Borat, here Sacha Baron Cohen is interacting with actors throughout, and there is not even an attempt to feign a “documentary” aesthetic. This frees sensitive souls such as myself from any need to feel sorry for the people he harasses, but it also robs the film of any pretensions of “outsider commentary” (and perhaps one could observe that said pretensions are exposed from the get-go by the reminder that Baron Cohen started his career by harassing his own countrymen). This just seems like the kind of movie a former cast member of Saturday Night Live would make, if slightly-more-inspired film than those efforts. And finally, Baron Cohen sure seems to put the truth to David Sedaris’ assertion that straight people spend too much time thinking about gay sex (I don’t even know if his “interest” is homophobic or not, it’s too weird to even be sure).

Source: Cinemax on demand
25 May, 9:17 PM