6/18/14: Every Group’s Got One

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Amanda Lund, Barry Burke, Brett Gelman, cinema, comedies, comedy, Damon Wayans Jr., Damon Wayons Jr., Ed Helms, father-son relationships, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, Frances Shaw, friends, Greg Germann, Hayes MacArthur, J. Robin Miller, Lucy Punch, male friendships, Melanie Miller, modern dating, Movies, obnoxious friends, Our Time is Up, relationships, Rob Pearlstein, romantic-comedies, Someone Marry Barry, Thomas Middleditch, true love, Tyler Labine, writer-director, Wyatt Oleff

Every group has one, whether they want to admit it or not: that hyperactive, obnoxious, vulgar “life of the party” who always manages to say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing and drag everyone down with them. These are the kind of people who get their friends thrown out of bars for starting fights with karaoke machines, punch police horses in the face and wear cargo shorts to fancy cocktail parties. They’ll be all too happy to blab your innermost secrets to the nearest available ears and have the special ability to attract more attention while out in public than firecrackers in a bubble-wrap factory. These people are embarrassing, crude, rude, loud-mouthed jerks and, more often than not, are supremely pleased by this: there’s no notion of changing these folks because they’re quite happy as they are, thank you. Every group has a name for these “special” individuals, these life-long friends that will always have your back, seemingly so they can concoct new ways to mortify you. We’ve all known people like this and, just perhaps, we’ve even been people like this. In the case of Rob Pearlstein’s uproarious new film, Someone Marry Barry (2014), this particular “someone” is named Barry Burke and, boy…is Barry really something!

Kurt (Thomas Middleditch), Desmond (Damon Wayans Jr.) and Rafe (Hayes MacArthur) are lifelong best friends with a bit of a problem: namely, Barry (Tyler Labine), the fourth member of their group. Kurt is trying to take his fractured relationship with longtime on-again/off-again girlfriend Camille (Frances Shaw) to the next level, Desmond is trying to find ways to balance his crushing work-load with spending more time with his neglected wife, Rachel (Amanda Lund) and Rafe is trying to balance the trials of modern dating with being a single father to precocious tyke J.T. (Wyatt Oleff). On their own, any of these tasks would be full-time jobs: throw in the frequently outrageous antics of best friend Barry, however, and things become that much more intolerable. After a particular humiliating experience at the funeral for Rafe’s father, during which Barry manages to not only reveal the deceased’s affairs in front of the assembled mourners but also manages to work in references to Kurt’s previous experience in an adult theater (Kurt the Squirt), the friends decide that something must be done with their boorish best friend. Since bumping him off is out of the question (despite Kurt’s continued protests), the friends decide to do the next best thing (in their minds, at least) and get Barry married off. If Barry has someone to keep him in line, like Desmond and Kurt do, they reason, he won’t be able to get them all into as much trouble. If wishes were horses, of course, we’d all ride away. In this case, Kurt, Rafe and Desmond might be wise to wait before investing in that stable.

Throwing themselves headfirst into the task, the trio try everything they can to help Barry find true love, including a disastrous speed dating session (turns out Barry is actually harder to take in small doses, fancy that) and an attempt to purchase a mail-order bride that could best be described as “potentially terrifying.” Just when all else fails, however, true love appears to rear its bizarre head in the form of one Melanie Miller (Lucy Punch). Mel, for lack of a better descriptor, is a female Barry: we first meet here in the middle of a date with the unlucky Ben (Ed Helms) which involves her graphic description of her yeast infection (her “beast inspection”), as well as the lovely declaration that she needs to take a shit. Turns out that Barry is on an equally successful date at the same restaurant and ends up sharing a cab with Mel after their respective dates run for cover (with each other, ironically enough). Barry and Mel hit it off like penguins and polar bears, at first, with each person trying to one-up the other in terms of sheer unpleasant foulness. In short order, however, a grudging respect has been forged: neither Barry nor Mel has ever met anyone quite like the other person. It’s almost like they were made for each other…although, if not for each other than, quite frankly, for whom?

In no time at all, sparks are flying and Barry and Mel seem to be head over heels for each other. Seeking to bring all of the friends together, as it were, the group plans a nice weekend away at the cabin: what should be a perfect opportunity for Kurt, Camille, Desmond, Rachel and Rafe to meet their “savior” for the first time devolves into abject horror once the group realizes that Mel is just a female Barry. After a car-trip filled with tag-team farting, annoying techno music and irritating laughing, the group is just about ready to pull their hair out. Is putting up with another Barry worth the price of preserving their childhood friendship? Should they all tell Barry how annoying Melanie is? Just what, exactly, is true love and does everyone have the right to experience it…including the truly irritating? At what point do friends need to sever ties and go their own ways…and does the needs of the group ever outweight an individual’s desire to be happy?

There are a few things that I ask of comedies but the main thing is pretty basic: I ask that they be funny. Comedies can be subtle, provoking a few chuckles and some smiles, or they can be explosively hilarious, prompting belly laughs and doubling-over on the floor. While either approach is valid, they have to at least broach the subject in order to get me on board. How does Someone Marry Barry stack up in this regard? Explosively. Quite frankly, Pearlstein’s film is one of the absolutely funniest I’ve seen in quite some time: I started laughing early on in the film and ended up laughing all the way through. Without putting too fine a point on it, Someone Marry Barry is a pretty great film but the humor is one of its strongest attributes. Pearlstein’s script is exceptionally sharp, full of tons of great dialogue, vulgar but hilarious situations and outrageous but sympathetic character development.

Actually caring about the characters in a film like this is paramount to its success and Pearlstein knocks it completely out of the park in that regard. Not only are the characters in the film funny, on their own, but they work together amazingly well as an ensemble. I actually felt like Kurt, Rafe, Desmond and Barry were life-long friends, with all of the baggage that such relationships require. Since the friendships felt justified and real, it was a lot easier to take Barry’s outrageous behaviour in stride: watching the film, I would often think back to my own churlish actions and how my friends reacted, which weren’t so far off the mark. The acting in the film is really top-notch: Damon Wayans Jr. is a dependably put-upon performer and Silicon Valley’s Middleditch brings just the right amount of pathetic “puppy dog”-ness to his portrayal of Kurt (his ultimate meltdown with Camille is one of the highlights of the film).

While the acting is superb across the board, especially from the principal actors, Someone Marry Barry ends up being a complete tour de force for Tyler Labine and Lucy Punch. I’ve always really enjoyed Labine as an actor: in fact, he’s one of those guys, like Ray Wise or Ron Perlman, that will draw me straight to a project, regardless of what I know (or don’t know) about said film. In the case of Someone Marry Barry, his prominent place on the box art was 100% responsible for my choosing the film in the first place and, as usual with Labine, I wasn’t disappointed. Quite simply, Labine is one of the very finest comedic actors in the business right now and is perilously close to approaching “living treasure” status: if you don’t automatically watch all of his films, correct that mistake immediately. While I really can’t praise Labine enough, however, I’d be a complete fool to deny Punch any of her own glory in the film. Punch is a vibrant, vulgar, loud-mouthed, brash, completely obnoxious, thoroughly alive and absolutely indispensable character. She’s one of the most joyous, realistic female characters I’ve ever seen portrayed and is absolutely the match for any bloke in the house. Were there a belching contest involved, I’d put my coins on Punch’s Melanie. First person to help out a friend in need? I’m more than willing to wager Melanie would be there, too. Far from being just “one of the guys,” Punch’s Mel is just “a person” who happens to be female: as she reminds us (frequently) throughout the film, women shit, swear, fuck, pick their noses, make mistakes and act like total assholes…just like guys.

While the film functions superbly as a buddy-comedy focused on male relationships (I hesitate to use the “bro-mance” tag but if the slipper fits…), the messy, wonderful romance between Mel and Barry serves as its big, beating heart. While Barry and Mel might be fairly awful people, in many ways, they’re perfect for each other and there’s something truly magical (and kind of old-fashioned, which ends up suiting the film well) about watching these two soulmates find each other. It’s to the film’s immense credit that despite the endless jokes about bathroom habits, sexual functions and inventive swearing (Barry and Mel bond over their mutual use of the portmanteau “twunt,” which you should be clever enough to figure out), all of the typical romance film beats (finding love, getting separated, re-finding each other) are delivered with such energy and genuine interest. This is isn’t a filthy comedy that threw a romance in to “even things out.” Rather, this is an honest-to-god romance that just seems to come wrapped in a pretty degenerate casing: think There’s Something About Mary (1998) but with a much more likable lead.

Writer-director Pearlstein makes his feature-film debut here, although he already comes with a pretty decent notch on his filmmaking belt: his 2005 short film, Our Time is Up, was nominated for an Academy Award. Pearlstein is completely self-assured behind the camera, although the film has the occasional tendency (never overly so) to be a tad bit silly. With a little more focus on the sharper, more incisive aspects of his very funny script, Pearlstein would have had an unmitigated masterpiece (no hyperbole intended): as it stands, however, he’ll just have to be satisfied with one of the funniest, big-hearted and impressive comedies I’ve seen in quite some time. While I’ve been a fan of Labine’s for years, Someone Marry Barry was my first experience with Rob Pearlstein: after this, however, I’ve made sure to add him to my “Ones to Watch” list. I’m a guy who really likes to laugh and Pearlstein managed to hit all the right buttons: here’s to hoping this guy has a long, fruitful career ahead of him.

5/2/14: You Horny Little Devil, You

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Ana Gasteyer, Anna Kendrick, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Bjorn Yearwood, black comedies, Calum Worthy, Chris Matheson, cinema, comedies, Craig Robinson, Earl Gundy, end of the world, fantasy, film reviews, films, giant lasers, God vs the Devil, Jesse Camacho, John Francis Daley, Ken Jeong, Lil' Beast, Movies, Paul Middleditch, Paul Scheer, plague of locusts, Rapture-Palooza, Rob Corddry, Robert C. New, the Antichrist, the Beast, The Greatest American Hero, the Rapture, Thomas Lennon, Tyler Labine, voice-over narration, wraiths

If you think about it, nothing happens without some kind of bureaucracy. What to change your name? Fill out a form in triplicate. Shoot an armed robber during a bank heist? Make sure your commander gets the paperwork by the end of the day. Need a loan? Sign here, here and initial here. Hell, even selling your soul requires a contract: you can be damn sure the Devil had his lawyers look at it, so you probably should, too. After all, who could possibly be more well-qualified to be the “patron saint” of paperwork and bureaucracy than ol’ Scratch, himself? Paul Middleditch’s newest film, Rapture-Palooza (2013), takes this idea one step further, positing a post-Rapture world where the plague of locusts may be a bummer but it’s the middle managers that really get ya down.

Lindsey (Anna Kendrick) and Ben (John Francis Daley) are a couple of kids who happen to be in love. They also happen to have been left behind by the Rapture, an event which we first see during an intense bowling game (natch). Lindsey and Ben may have been damned to spend the remainder of their lives in a fiery wasteland populated by dope-smoking wraith security guards (Tyler Labine and Paul Scheer), haranguing human-faced locusts (Suffer! Suffer!) and raining blood (more of an irritation than a horror, since the damn blood gets everywhere and windshield wipers just smear that shit around) but they’ve got each other and that’s good enough for them. Complications arise, however when the Antichrist, one Earl Gundy (Craig Robinson) takes a lascivious interest in the virginal Lindsey. Since this is, after all, his world now, Gundy swipes Lindsey, determined to break through her demure protests and make her his infernal queen. Ben, for his part, just wishes his Gundy-employed dad, Mr. House (Rob Corddry), would quit trying to set up Lindsey with the Devil, in order to curry favor.

Eventually, all hell breaks loose (even more than usual, let’s say) and Ben takes on the Antichrist’s minions, with the help of Lindsey’s drug-dealing brother, Clark Lewis (yes, his name really is Clark Lewis) and his best buddy, Fry (Jesse Camacho). The Devil won’t go down without a fight and a quip (or three), however, and things get even messier when Jesus (Mark Wynn) and God (Ken Jeong) show up. Spoiler alert: God’s just as big a dick as the Devil, at least when you’re one of the “little” people. Through it all, however, Lindsey and Ben never lose sight of one thing: if you’ve got true love, you don’t need eternal salvation…just a little sandwich cart and a piece of Apocalypse to call your own.

Similar to the way in which 1997 featured the dueling volcano films Volcano and Dante’s Peak (which, I think, were basically the same film), 2013 featured dueling post-Rapture films: James Franco’s in-joke This is the End and Rapture-Palooza. While I genuinely enjoyed This is the End (which, ironically, also featured Robinson), there was a lot of the film that was too meta and self-concerned to be much use for the average viewer (read: anyone who wasn’t actually in the movie). I found myself smiling quite a bit and appreciated how smart the whole thing was (and it really was a smart film, despite my natural desire to slam Franco for simply existing) but I didn’t find it uproariously funny, bar a few moments (Michael Cera, for the win). Rapture-Palooza, on the other hand, is extremely funny, packed with so many righteously hilarious bits that picking favorites was a little hard.

I absolutely adored the locusts and wraiths (I’ll watch Tyler Labine do anything, including reading a grocery list) but there were dozens of other bits that caught my eye/tickled my funny-bone: Gundy’s son, Lil’ Beast; the surface-to-air anti-Jesus laser; Jeong’s wonderful slant on God as an irritable jerk; that damn sandwich cart; Ana Gasteyer getting sent back to Earth, post-Rapture, for being “too annoying”…these and many more provided a near constant source of amusement throughout the film. My rules for comedy are generally pretty open: just make me laugh and I’m a happy guy. Rapture-Palooza made me laugh more often than not, so that’s a big check mark in the “Positive” category.

The biggest check mark in the “Negative” category? That would have to be Robinson’s endless and increasingly obnoxious sexual innuendos and come-ons. The whole plot of the film is precipitated on the Antichrist desiring Lindsey: we get that. When every third thing out of Robinson’s mouth is another tired variation on “hide the salami,” however, things get old awfully quick. Even more iffy is the notion that 99% of his “jokes” and innuendo involve raping Lindsey, something which never makes for good humor. Since Lindsey has made her feelings plainly clear and repeatedly (and clearly) said “no” in any given situation, it’s hard not to see the Devil’s continued attempts as anything short of an attempt to take her by force. At one point, the Antichrist even makes it plainly clear, telling Lindsey that she’s going to “get it,” whether she wants it or not. While I get what the filmmakers were going for and fully acknowledge that Robinson is known for a bit o’ the dirty talk, I always found this aspect of the film to be in bad taste. Truthfully, without the excessively “rapey” jokes, I would have found Rapture-Palooza to be a nearly perfect film, at least for my sensibilities.

This reliance on aggressively bad taste is a shame, really, because the 1% of Robinson’s dialogue that isn’t given over to imaginative euphemisms for intercourse is pretty spectacular. Robinson is an incredibly gifted comedian, a performer who has a way with a withering line (and glance) that’s almost peerless: his work on The Office is a master-class in the “friendly asshole.” When Gundy isn’t obsessed with Lindsey’s lady parts, he’s spot-on fantastic, no more so than his interactions with his son, Lil’ Beast (Bjorn Yearwood). The Antichrist shows such disdain for his son that it becomes a running joke and a marvelously cruel one, at that. Perhaps it speaks more to my sense of humor but Robinson’s delivery of the line, “Don’t be a dud, little fucker,” made me laugh so hard that I cried. Really. I just wish there were more moments like that in  Robinson’s performance and fewer bits that made me cringe.

The rest of the cast ranges from good to pretty great, with only Gasteyer’s shrill, over-the-top performance as being a bit of a wet blanket. Corddry is fantastic as Ben’s practical, if spectacularly untrustworthy father and Calum Worthy brings just the right touch of “douchbaggery” to his portrayal of Lindsey’s brother. I wish Labine and Scheer (so wonderful as the idiotic Andre on The League) had bigger roles, since either one of them could have carried a lead or supporting performance on their own. What’s here is excellent, however, and I’ll never get tired of Scheer’s pot-smoking wraith, especially when he’s berating Corddry: the whole ensemble has great chemistry together.

While there are plenty of big names/faces in front of the camera, two of the behind-the-scenes folk are just as interesting. The sharp, witty screenplay was written by Chris Matheson, better known as the scribe behind Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989). Matheson’s script is full of great lines and scenes…when it isn’t overly focused on Robinson’s potty-mouth, that is. Nonetheless, there were enough genuinely great moments to make me wish Matheson would write more. He appears to be working on an adaptation of The Greatest American Hero which could be pretty great (remake notwithstanding) if he brought a tenth of the energy and nerve from this script. Cinematography duties on Rapture-Palooza, meanwhile, were handled by another ’80s-’90s-era vet, Robert C. New. While he might not be a household name, genre fans should be more than familiar with his work, since he served as director of photography on films like Prom Night (1980), Night of the Creeps (1986), Big Bad Mama II (1987) and John McNaughton’s classic, The Borrower (1991). Thanks to New, Rapture-Palooza always looks great, with vibrant colors and plenty of nicely composed shots: it looks like the furthest thing from a cheaply made, direct-to-video offering possible, even if it never received much (if any) theatrical love.

Ultimately, Rapture-Palooza, like Kevin Smith’s Dogma (1999) is one of those films that’s designed to split an audience in half. If you have any reverence for religion, particularly Christianity, this might not be the film for you. While the movie frequently takes easy potshots at its targets (to be honest, the last secular film that dealt with the Rapture in any way other than humorously was the odd Mini Driver-starrer The Rapture (1991) ), its final revelation may be a bit much for some people: to find true peace, humans need to give up their reliance on religion. While it’s not a surprising revelation (I would have been more surprised had this ended with a truly religious message, to be honest), it’s definitely something that might tune a few people out. If you have an open-mind, however, and are in the mood for some rude laughs, Rapture-Palooza could just be a little slice of Heaven on Earth. It’s the end of the world, as we know it…and it feels good.