Under the watchful eyes of a rag-tag, binocular-equipped audience, an abandoned tire comes to life in the middle of the desert. Wandering aimlessly across the landscape, the tire discovers an ability to inflict harm, which it cheerfully unleashes upon a bewildered set of human targets. The hunt is on for this head-exploding killer, even as the nature of his reality becomes more and more questionable.
Your proprietor was as taken with the weirdness and energy of the trailer for this film as anyone else, but was disappointed to see it reveal itself, very very quickly, to be this year's Dot The I. Though the effects and filmmaking skills are there to fully fulfill its promise, director Quentin Dupieux immediately informs his audience that they're in for navel-gazing, coy gamesmanship, and tedious self-reflexive commentary that promises to undermine any thrills they might experience in the movie's running time. This promise, alas, is the one that Dupieux ultimately keeps, and it's sad to see a film that could easily have supported its outre premise fall into a self-congratulating rut of half-assed philosophizing; worse still the manner in which it talks down to its audience. Too dim to take any of its conceited games anywhere of interest, too arch to be any damn fun, there's no fucking reason for this movie to exist, or for you to see it.
Watched this on Sunday. Terrible. "No reason" became a running gag for the viewing group I was part of. I am guessing that the treatment of the viewers is meant to symbolize the director's sadistic contempt for his audience?
ReplyDeleteIt's hard not to come to that conclusion, yes. And it makes the overall cocktail of the movie that much harder to swallow. Not showing us the killer tire movie we were expecting is one thing, but willfully punishing us for wanting to see a killer tire movie in the first place is the worst kind of bad faith.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading, though.