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| Tim Heidecker |
November 2, 2012
One of the more popular subgenres of the past few years has been pointless introspections. Directors like Sofia Coppola have made a career out of extended silence and the expectation of a Stanley Kubrick-level of imagery that replaces narrative. Oftentimes these stories reflect the dullness of the subject that they are dealing with and come across as a pretentious view of privilege. That is the plot to director Rick Alverson’s The Comedy, which attempts to dissect the absurd elements with the help of manic sketch comedian Tim Heidecker. Does it succeed in revealing the foibles of the genre, or is this just another film about useless reflection?
Heidecker plays Swanson, a 30-something with an aimless lifestyle who lives aboard a boat in the middle of the ocean. Upon the realization that he can acquire his father’s estate, he tries to give meaning to his life by doing meaningless things. Along with his friends Van Arman (Tim and Eric sketch partner Eric Wareheim) and Ben (former LCD Soundsystem front man James Murphy in his acting debut), they get drunk and wrestle, argue with cabbies, and goof around in churches. There is no actual meaning to any of this, but along with a lot of inappropriate jokes, this is as eventful as Sawnson’s life gets.
The majority of the film is indistinguishable from what it claims to satirize. With exception to a few scenes that leak out the familiar Tim and Eric zaniness, this is a very subdued performance by Heidecker. He may make the occasional joke about his father’s rectal problems, but he embodies the stereotypes effectively. His refusal to be vulnerable and the stubbornness that gets him into trouble serve no purpose. This plays to the film’s favor, as the ridiculousness of introspection and the hypocritical aspects blend into an odd commentary of the life unlived. The story may often be too dry and the pacing a little slow, but The Comedy succeeds in execution.
What benefits the film also detracts a little. Where Heidecker’s solemn character effectively carries the movie, the rest of the cast is more problematic. The James Murphy character feels useless and his contributions add little to the story; if any character deserved a more satirical bent, it would be the man who actually composed the score for Greenberg, a movie that The Comedy is essentially lampooning. Eric Wareheim is a little more effective, though less nuanced than Heidecker. He shouts and laughs and is the closest to embodying the Tim and Eric personas, which keeps the film’s absurdity levels afloat, but often feels out-of-place.
The film is also very pretentious, as expected. Because there are a lot of quiet moments, the movie unambitiously uses this time to turn pointless things into art. Things like driving a boat or running down the street are meant to feature ambiance and poignancy. It almost feels forced and the satire begins to blur. At 93 minutes, it feels much longer and the endearing performance by Heidecker gets buried under the film’s pacing issues.
In many ways, The Comedy can be seen as a counterpart to The Master. Where The Master goes for grandiose scores and performances, The Comedy is the opposite. Both are very dry and perverse examples of misguided figures. Both spend a lot of time analyzing the motivations of deranged, unappealing fools, often on boats. The difference is that The Comedy feels lazy in what it chooses to leave as open-ended questions. This could largely be due to the script by Rick Alverson, Robert Donne, and Colm O’Leary. With the shooting script being a reported 20 page treatment, the dialogue was mostly improvised. It is just unfortunate that these two films came out close together, as both reflect commentary on the human condition, with The Master being funnier and better paced despite the longer running time and lack of comedians.
The film may be slow and often too pretentious, but it isn’t a waste. It is a nice change of pace from Heidecker’s previous film, the grating Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, which saw the downside of eccentricity. At very least it shows Heidecker as a promising performer with consistently humorous riffing and a capability to find inspiration in the quietness. The Comedy is to introspective films as Zelig is to old-time documentaries: a very faithful satire that is dry and slow-paced to the point that it may be a little too familiar. It is at times too much of a mess, but that only helps it achieve the joke about the life unlived. The trouble with the joke is that it is almost novelty and how long the suspension of disbelief can last is how long this movie will seem enjoyable.
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