Not a great movie, but likeable, despite its flaws. Probably intended to be a scathing satire on the entertainment industry, but it needed more bite and a sharper script to make it really work.
Good intentions are not enough when you are a pathetic loser. The only character in this movie who deserve respect is the mother
This movie is better than I expected it to be but at the same time it's also just running a little above average. The story is there but the characters disappointed me in their depth, you're expecting at some point some of these characters to stand up for themselves and it just never really happens. You want to root for them, and in that regard the movie delivers, but ultimately past the somewhat strange love story they just don't really evolve or make logical choices that would get made outside a romcom. As far as the genre goes it's honestly right on point, it's just one of those movies that could've been a lot better if the cornball elements were removed and the nature of what was going on was explored more in depth, and by that I mean the exploitation of people for entertainment sake.
A look at how TV can mess someone’s life up, how the people with laugh at and consider a joke might be suffering and trying to scape. It’s not a great movie, and the love story is just not believable, but at the end you’ll end up wondering what happen to all those people that became tv stars for the wrong reasons and maybe feeling a little bit guilty.
Review by wolfkinBlockedParent2022-01-27T15:55:28Z
This movie was a fun ride unfortunately it couldn't deliver on any of the, maybe, five ways it should have aimed. The casting was excellent. A nice pick of funny people some of whom are amusing in the movie.
I expect this to be a sort of charming indie style film about the quiet desperation of Eddie the Clapper. Would it be heartwarming, depressing who knows. I think the first problem here is that ED Helms and Amanda Seyfried don't have the right chemistry. To be fair as much as I have issues with Seyfried I think given the right direction she can be a great romantic lead. But she isn't given enough here to work with. I see why Eddie likes Judy but I have no idea why Judy likes Eddie. Ed Helms is fun but the chemistry is all one way until suddenly she's kissing him.
And then the plot happens and Eddie gets his 15 minutes of fame. There's a lot of interesting places the narrative can go from here. Does it explore the price of fame? The callousness of so-called "fame-whores"? Does it crawl inside Eddie's head? Does it focus on the relationship with Judy? Unfortunately it doesn't really do much of anything. While the setup was compelling in a charming indie sort of way the back half of the film doesn't follow through on anything interesting. We have a sort of a few people who could be considered antagonists but the movie doesn't really do anything with that. The movie just sort of flops around with no real confrontation using coincidence and deus ex machina to get to an ending. Even The Lobster which had similar issues of not knowing what it wanted to say was able to get closer to a point than this.