Friday, November 13, 2009

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men

Dir: John Krasinski

Grade: intolerable


Imagine a film where two catering waiters carry on a rambling dialectic about the needs and wants of brattish NYU professors and their complex sexual nature while an army of empty characters interact in a plotless void. No imagination needed. The Office’s John Krasinksi has made this very movie.

 

Brief? Hardly. Supposedly based on six short stories by David Foster Wallace, BIWHM, an unspecific musing on the modern woman and her “needs”, is a pretty un-watchable hunk of New York elitist BS. So meaningless is the dialog, I stopped caring what these characters were talking about within the first five minutes. Maybe its because I went to NYU and I am a modern woman that I found nothing true or engaging about what the men in this movie had to say about my ilk. Unfortunately, the women in question had almost nothing to say for themselves.

 

It’s too bad. Krasinski was able to wrangle some serious talent for his writer/director debut and he wasted every last bit of it. Timothy Hutton demands instant hatred as an arrogant professor aware of his dominant position over women and was sadly the only character with teeth. The usually amazing Will Arnett was left with nothing to do but “act” with himself in a vain attempt to funny up the flick. Krasinski’s Office mate Rashida Jones is virtually an extra, as is Krasinski himself. Other talented comedians, including SNL’s Will Forte, fill in the film’s over-populated world with little spark.

 

It amazed me how so many funny people could create a film without the slightest hope of a laugh. Not that this was supposed to be a comedy. It’s just that when you pack your film with famous funny people, your audience is going to expect to chuckle once in awhile. But, I suppose I am not the audience this film was made for, despite my precise resume. It was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance, once again proving that people who give out awards think they are somehow smarter than the rest of us. Really now. I got it and it wasn’t good.