This movie is brilliant. Yes it requires a bit of suspension of disbelief. Yes you have to accept the reality of this universe to enjoy the film, but how is that different from every marvel movie being gobbled up?? You can suspend your disbelief for 100 Spider-Mans, just do yourself a favor and buy into this world from the beginning. Let yourself enjoy this movie.
I have a theory that anyone with adhd (like myself) will not only enjoy, but love this movie. The ambling tumble weed of a plot is incredibly refreshing. The rejection of the exact same movie structure we've seen thousands of times (and can now predict in our sleep) is done with self-aware humor and some genuinely decent commentary on the industry.
Not to mention for a film rejecting traditions in certain ways, it's almost balanced out with homages to classic films throughout. From the live scoring, to the Indiana-Jones-esque relationship he has with his hat, to the obvious physical humor referencing the silent film era as a silent character. It's simultaneously paying respects to, and challenging the entire art form of film in itself.
And Charlie's performance! And Ken Jeong! As well as the rest of the cast. Fantastic. You understand exactly what Charlie's character is feeling and thinking. The chemistry between ken and Charlie is more than believable, and downright lovable.
Ken is charming and carries so much as a scene partner. Working with someone who can't speak any lines is obviously a challenge and he delivered everything so smoothly it helped both characters be understood not just his own. Their chemistry was crucial to the movie working, and in my opinion it couldn't have been done better.
Not every single movie has to center a romance. This one not only centers an platonic friendship, it makes a whole point to show how shallow and detached forced relationship story lines in a film can be by having him marry a famous and beautiful woman because she tells him to. That feeling of "this is stupid why would they have him get married and adopt kids for no reason? That makes no sense"- your gut reaction may give you at first to the marriage, is exactly how it feels when gratuitous romance plot lines are added to films where they aren't needed! Like that uncomfortable 'why are they doing this' feeling IS making the point!
Then there's the fact that this film is absolutely packed with cameos, from Charlie's days wife Mary Elizabeth, and Artimis playing his make up team, to Jason sudeikis, and Bateman, even John Malkovich is there and then Common, and that's just scraping the surface.
Charlie Day has given interviews explaining the main character as someone who "wants nothing" and that concept on its own goes against every single lesson taught in every single acting class. Actors are trained on the absolute basics of knowing what your character wants, informing what behavior to use to obtain that want.
What Charlie has done here, is literally create a character stripped of any opinion or wants. Which leaves only the raw human existence and ends up revealing something undeniably true. Even a person without a single want in the world still has NEEDS.
He still needs a place to sleep and food to eat. He needs people to help him. He needs physical safety and autonomy. This realization at the end is paralleled verbally by ken jongs character, discovering something similar for himself. He needs true unconditional love too. He needs human connection more than anything else, and so does Charlie's character regardless of what he does or doesn't want.
This movie feels made for neurodivergent people. Sometimes this is exactly what life feels like. You're getting shuffled and pushed around and you don't understand what people want from you or why they are so concerned with things that don't or shouldn't matter. The way you can feel so misunderstood by people, it's like you might as well not be speaking at all, or you have literal nonverbal episodes. This movie didn't feel like it was mocking non verbal people, and it could have gone in that direction.
Like I said before, it requires a bit of reality suspension. But if we can all be okay with a talking raccoon, or a tree that only speaks in its own name, we can survive a mysterious condition that prevents this man from talking.
In my personal neurodivergent opinion, It felt like a good representation of what it feels like to operate in a world where you feel misunderstood, and you don't understand it back just as much. But at the end of the day we all need love and support, even if our wants don't align with most people or make sense to them.
There are moments in the film where Charlie's character is visibly uncomfortable, and doesn't have much bodily autonomy throughout. He's shuffled and dragged and posed scene to scene. He's literally threatened by knife point over and over, and even hung with a rope at one point. The willingness to go along with what's happening to him, even when he is uncomfortable, points out his NEED for human connection, even if it's an instinct he doesn't understand, he frequently allows himself to be put in places he doesn't want to be because of the need for other people. He quite literally runs off more than once from being scared or confused, so any time he chooses to stay its saying a lot without words. He could have jumped out of bed and run away when Kate asked him to marry her, he could have jogged away any time before or during the wedding, and he chose to stay where he was.
He doesn't have the want to sleep on a park bench, but he has the need for familiarity, and the one thing that can trump that for him is human connection. When those human connections are lost he flees or attempts to. Building this paradoxically complex/simple character.
This movie is brilliant, ignore the people who don't get it. They probably want to see another movie where a team of handsome men in tights put aside their differences and band together to fight a bad guy, one forced pun punch line at a time. Or maybe a horror movie where a family moves into an old farm house for cheap and mysterious things start happening?
Aren't we all sick of the same 6 movies being made over and over?
Like don't you WANT to see something that's never been done before? That challenges the form? That tries something new?
I think Charlie Day put a lot of himself into this character. He seems like someone's who's remained fairly grounded, and a little weird, and true to himself despite his fame and success.
He is a delight to watch in this film, and it is well done. Don't go into this movie expecting something you've seen before, go in ready for something more creative. And it is hilarious, yet heartwarming fits in there somehow too. 10/10 for sure. Anyone who rated this low is either boring, neurotypical or both.
I have a theory that anyone with adhd (like myself) will not only enjoy, but love this movie. The ambling tumble weed of a plot is incredibly refreshing. The rejection of the exact same movie structure we've seen thousands of times (and can now predict in our sleep) is done with self-aware humor and some genuinely decent commentary on the industry.
Not to mention for a film rejecting traditions in certain ways, it's almost balanced out with homages to classic films throughout. From the live scoring, to the Indiana-Jones-esque relationship he has with his hat, to the obvious physical humor referencing the silent film era as a silent character. It's simultaneously paying respects to, and challenging the entire art form of film in itself.
And Charlie's performance! And Ken Jeong! As well as the rest of the cast. Fantastic. You understand exactly what Charlie's character is feeling and thinking. The chemistry between ken and Charlie is more than believable, and downright lovable.
Ken is charming and carries so much as a scene partner. Working with someone who can't speak any lines is obviously a challenge and he delivered everything so smoothly it helped both characters be understood not just his own. Their chemistry was crucial to the movie working, and in my opinion it couldn't have been done better.
Not every single movie has to center a romance. This one not only centers an platonic friendship, it makes a whole point to show how shallow and detached forced relationship story lines in a film can be by having him marry a famous and beautiful woman because she tells him to. That feeling of "this is stupid why would they have him get married and adopt kids for no reason? That makes no sense"- your gut reaction may give you at first to the marriage, is exactly how it feels when gratuitous romance plot lines are added to films where they aren't needed! Like that uncomfortable 'why are they doing this' feeling IS making the point!
Then there's the fact that this film is absolutely packed with cameos, from Charlie's days wife Mary Elizabeth, and Artimis playing his make up team, to Jason sudeikis, and Bateman, even John Malkovich is there and then Common, and that's just scraping the surface.
Charlie Day has given interviews explaining the main character as someone who "wants nothing" and that concept on its own goes against every single lesson taught in every single acting class. Actors are trained on the absolute basics of knowing what your character wants, informing what behavior to use to obtain that want.
What Charlie has done here, is literally create a character stripped of any opinion or wants. Which leaves only the raw human existence and ends up revealing something undeniably true. Even a person without a single want in the world still has NEEDS.
He still needs a place to sleep and food to eat. He needs people to help him. He needs physical safety and autonomy. This realization at the end is paralleled verbally by ken jongs character, discovering something similar for himself. He needs true unconditional love too. He needs human connection more than anything else, and so does Charlie's character regardless of what he does or doesn't want.
This movie feels made for neurodivergent people. Sometimes this is exactly what life feels like. You're getting shuffled and pushed around and you don't understand what people want from you or why they are so concerned with things that don't or shouldn't matter. The way you can feel so misunderstood by people, it's like you might as well not be speaking at all, or you have literal nonverbal episodes. This movie didn't feel like it was mocking non verbal people, and it could have gone in that direction.
Like I said before, it requires a bit of reality suspension. But if we can all be okay with a talking raccoon, or a tree that only speaks in its own name, we can survive a mysterious condition that prevents this man from talking.
In my personal neurodivergent opinion, It felt like a good representation of what it feels like to operate in a world where you feel misunderstood, and you don't understand it back just as much. But at the end of the day we all need love and support, even if our wants don't align with most people or make sense to them.
There are moments in the film where Charlie's character is visibly uncomfortable, and doesn't have much bodily autonomy throughout. He's shuffled and dragged and posed scene to scene. He's literally threatened by knife point over and over, and even hung with a rope at one point. The willingness to go along with what's happening to him, even when he is uncomfortable, points out his NEED for human connection, even if it's an instinct he doesn't understand, he frequently allows himself to be put in places he doesn't want to be because of the need for other people. He quite literally runs off more than once from being scared or confused, so any time he chooses to stay its saying a lot without words. He could have jumped out of bed and run away when Kate asked him to marry her, he could have jogged away any time before or during the wedding, and he chose to stay where he was.
He doesn't have the want to sleep on a park bench, but he has the need for familiarity, and the one thing that can trump that for him is human connection. When those human connections are lost he flees or attempts to. Building this paradoxically complex/simple character.
This movie is brilliant, ignore the people who don't get it. They probably want to see another movie where a team of handsome men in tights put aside their differences and band together to fight a bad guy, one forced pun punch line at a time. Or maybe a horror movie where a family moves into an old farm house for cheap and mysterious things start happening?
Aren't we all sick of the same 6 movies being made over and over?
Like don't you WANT to see something that's never been done before? That challenges the form? That tries something new?
I think Charlie Day put a lot of himself into this character. He seems like someone's who's remained fairly grounded, and a little weird, and true to himself despite his fame and success.
He is a delight to watch in this film, and it is well done. Don't go into this movie expecting something you've seen before, go in ready for something more creative. And it is hilarious, yet heartwarming fits in there somehow too. 10/10 for sure. Anyone who rated this low is either boring, neurotypical or both.