Portrait of the Artist as a Young Meh: The Comedy

Well, it finally happened. I saw my first bad movie, and it was Rick Alverson’s The Comedy - a shame, really, considering how high my hopes were when I read the summary and saw that it was starring Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim (of a movie I actually did like, the previously-blogged Tim And Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie). It was bound to happen, I just wish it wasn’t with this one.

I’ll start out with what worked: the soundtrack was fantastic and filled with a wide variety of music, ranging from danceable party music to stuff more suited to relaxing. All of the musical cues felt very appropriate and the mood that the song choices helped create was very nice. Tim Heidecker also turned in an incredibly solid performance as Swanson, an aging member of the “hipster” generation who has to deal with the death of his father. Heidecker absolutely nails it, showcasing an incredible sense of reaction to Swanson’s often-ridiculous friends and environment, both of which he clearly is starting to question why he even keeps up with in the first place. He plays Swanson as a man who is used to seeing the world through layers of irony and treating it with a sense of bemused detachment, but is quickly realizing that as he ages, there’s no point in treating the world that way. The loneliness and uncertainty Swanson feels throughout the film play out beautifully on Heidecker’s expressive face, and he is without a doubt the most fully realized character in the entire film.

Aside from these two bright spots, The Comedy unfortunately doesn’t live up to the hype. The film is paced far too slowly, is filled with characters who feel more like caricatures than real people, and is filled with shots and entire sequences that do nothing to further the story or flesh out the motives of the characters. I appreciate Alverson’s ambition - the technical aspects of the film show that he clearly knows what he’s doing in that regard - but the weakness of the story and the characters severely hampered the film’s effectiveness. Hopefully Alverson’s next effort will be better handled.