This mayhaps is the dumbest movie I’ve ever seen in its entirety in my whole damn life. It took me a good fifteen minutes before I realized this wasn’t some avant-garde commercial because I was seeing a “mystery screening” of the film and it was my first time at the Alamo, so I didn’t have my expectations set yet for what a movie was supposed to look like. Once it became clear that this was, in fact, the movie, and not some crazy trailer for a movie that had meandered on for too long, I was a little bit confused by the jerky camerawork, the absurdist low budget special effects that look like they had been made by a bunch of school children in the 90s, and the brutal amateur acting (everyone looks like they’re the main character, director, and screenwriter’s actual family or friends who’ve been roped into the film on short notice), but after the movie, which clocks in sub-90 minutes, sustains that level of breakneck camp energy for more than its initial burst, it becomes sort of legible and actually kind of impressive.
I would sort of advice you against watching any trailers for this movie before you commit yourself to its full viewing, just because I feel like a lot of its aesthetic choices will grow on you the longer you marinade in its stupidity. It is clearly a labor of love by a whole city and at the same time a love letter to the city that created it. Think the dumb humor of Airplane meets the budget of a college student meets frenetic energy of your very best friend the first time he tries cocaine with you but it’s a Wednesday and all you had planned before you did a bump was to maybe watch an episode of House and play Risk together and you’ve got a good sense of what’s happening here.
Probably my favorite part about this movie was the pre-show which I got to alone in an entirely empty theater before the server came and I remember casually asked her what the movie was going to be, to which she responded, “Well, there’s a lot of dogs in the pre-show, so I assumed maybe something with dogs??? I thought you would know.” To which, I responded, “OH SO YOU DON’T KNOW EITHER?” To which she responded, “Oh, I’m going to have to come in as the title plays so that we can–” and I finished her sentence, “Lock eyes with you from across the room,” and we both sort of nodded our heads slowly and conspiratorially for a few seconds before proceeding to do just that.
