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By EdwardHavens
June 22nd, 2009
For several years, there has been a new kind of film movement called Mumblecore which has allegedly been sweeping across the land and creating media darlings of people like Andrew Bujalski, Greta Gerwig, Joe Swanberg and the Duplass Brothers. One could say it's akin to what happened forty years ago, when films like "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Easy Rider" help kick off the New Hollywood revolution that changed cinema.
(Note: This review comes from a screening as part of the 2009 Los Angeles Film Festival. As of this writing, “Humpday” is scheduled to open in Los Angeles and New York City on July 10.)
The difference is, audiences actually wanted to see films like “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Easy Rider.” Tens of millions of filmgoers of all ages helped make these films modern classics that are still enjoyed and studied and argued about, while the highest grossing Mumblecore movie to date was barely seen by twenty thousand people in theatres. And yet, these movies, with their micro-budgets and DV camerawork with sparse lighting, which tend to focus on the personal relationships of the young and confused, continue to get written up by the likes of Film Comment and The Village Voice and the New York Times, as if there’s something there.
Lynn Shelton’s “Humpday” breaks the Mumblecore formula in two major ways, by making the two main characters in their thirtysomethings and giving one of them a spouse, yet continues the fine Mumblecore tradition of only being of interest to only those who might be exactly like those characters. And it’s highly unlikely there are a lot of straight guys in their thirtysomethings who might even consider making an artistic porn film whose alleged main attraction is watching two straight guys in their thirtysomethings getting it on with each other. Because, from the Mumblecore movies this critic has seen thus far, these movies are the modern DIY equivalents of the old Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney “Let’s put on a show” movies of the late 1930s and early 1940s, but instead of colorful cinematography and happy singing and dancing, we get aimless tongue-tied young adults stumbling through improvised scenes and dialogue in search of some meaning, stretching what might have been an interesting fifteen minute short in to a barely coherent ninety minute treatise on guys who don’t know when enough is enough.
And sadly, the most interesting characters in “Humpday” are not the main focuses of the story, one-time college buddies Ben (Mark Duplass) and Andrew (Joshua Leonard) but the women who orbit around them, like Ben’s put-upon wife Anna (Alycia Delmore), who has the single good moment in the film when she discovers by accident during a drunken bonding moment with Andrew the truth about the boys’ impending art project, or Monica (writer/director Lynn Shleton herself), the bisexual bon-vivant who Andrew crosses path with Andrew early in the film and gets the impetus of the story going by introducing the Humpfest plotline (and eventually putting Andrew in his place sexually and emotionally).
Seriously, I am not sure whom to be most disappointed with: Ms. Shelton, who thought a story about two straight guys maybe screwing each other on video might be of any interest to an audience, the actors and crew who helped make the absurd story a reality, the people who financed the project, the distributor who usually has a track record when it comes to finding those little films that have the ability to find an audience, or myself, who walked in to the film with an open mind, hoping for the best and walking out most disappointed.
My rating: D