Monday, August 22, 2022

MIFF Play #5: THE LONELY SPIRITS VARIETY HOUR

Neville Umbrellaman is starting his cool vibe home broadcast show, playing all the cues himself and cooing smooth DJ style into a microphone, introducing guests and philosophising. Then we see in an early scene that he is actually in a coma. The rest is more of both.

There is very little in the way of universal humour. You could point to the natural humour of the real world where ironic mistakes are made or physical falls taken. When it comes to more conceptual fare, one person's gold is the next person's grind. We might know perfectly well it's meant to be funny but we simply don't laugh, at or with. That's the case here; it took minutes for me to fear that I was in for a feature length movie of try-hard grind. Spoiler: I was right.

I kept thinking, even for a whimsical style like this there has to be a moment of conflict, something to prevent it from levitating out the window in a waft of invisible vapour. Then came the scenes at the hospital which are well played. Two other well performed moments happen with the radio show guests who talk about bread (works because, despite the goofy accent it's delivered seriously) and the dance with signing (works because its motive feels sincere). Everything else depends on how well you get along with the protagonist who is on screen for over 90% of the running time, relaying a never ending series of piffling cutesy drivel. If you could wrest a speck of charm from his performance you would like this movie. For my part I have seldom experienced seventy-seven minutes as three hours as I did with this.

Then, at some point, I realised as all this repeatedly fell flat on its face on screen, it probably would work really well live on stage. The energy of the performers and the shifting bubble between them and the audience would lift this immensely. That is the origin of this piece. But on film it just feels contrived and indulgence-begging and the physicality of the performances is marred constantly by overperformance. You won't see mugging and gurning like this outside of an old I Love Lucy episode. I do imagine there are people out there who would warm and even thrill to this but for me it ground into my wince.

No comments:

Post a Comment