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.
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.