The Color Wheel

Alex Ross Perry's The Color Wheel is proof that indie narcissism can occasionally pull out the goods.

Filmed on grainy 16mm, it's a meandering road movie about two underachieving, alienated siblings. After she splits up with her professor-cum-boyfriend , aspiring news anchor J.R. (Carlen Altman) begs her shlubby younger brother Colin (played by director Perry) to help her back up the remnants of her miserable life and move on to the next. The journey across the States causes quite a stir, with the pair constantly berating each other in that conventional brotherly-sisterly banter way. It escalates to a harrowing final ten minutes, where the familial relationship is tested and it's clear that, if they weren't to have each other, they wouldn't have anything.

Like many a-mumblecore movie before it, The Color Wheel consists of verbal sparring and excruciatingly awkward long takes. Unlike those insufferable predecessors, Perry and Altman's script moves with great acerbic force, audaciously treating the blackly comic as flippant light humor. It's quite similar in tone to Rick Alverson's The Comedy, starring Tim Heidecker, only the two loathsome characters here are presented with more compassion, actually having a narrative arc to follow right up to the film's bitter end.

Whilst the scenes shared between the two are close to Alvy Singer>Annie Hall style perfection, The Color Wheel loses it's spark when the pair are backed up by cliché filler characters – the sorority bitch, the dumb jock, the rich kids – during a horrendous dinner party. It's the only time when the amateur acting and forced dialogue reflect it's minor budget production qualities.

With improvised dialogue, a roaming plot, grainy 16mm stock and Sean Price Williams' artless cinematography, The Color Wheel absolutely stinks of Husbands-era John Cassavetes. Not that it's a bad scent, but it permeates throughout the film and leads the homage into unwarranted pastiche, and ultimately externalizes us from the drama.

Even still, this minor tragicomedy, is a minor triumph for Perry and star in the making Altman. For fans of all things awkward, this unassuming movie sets the m-m-m-mumblecore wheel back in motion.

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The movie begins with an intriguing premise that engages the viewer, but as the story unfolds, the plot gradually becomes less and less logical. The locations, distances, timeframes and relations lose coherence, culminating with a really unpredictable ending but not in a good way.

The dialogs are unnatural and annoying in their effort of being witty. The supposed estranged sibling dynamic between the main characters seems more reflective of the real-life couple portraying them. Their screenplay feels like a thinly veiled attempt to wrestle with personal insecurities and envy toward specific social groups, which detracts from the authenticity of their on-screen relationship.

From a technical perspective, the film appears to have been shot digitally and desaturated in postproduction, resulting in large, flat grey areas poorly masked by artificial digital grain. The title itself seems like another failed attempt at being clever, referencing the visuals rather than any deeper meaning.

At first glance, it may seem like a hidden gem for indie movie lovers. However, the film's lack of logic, grating dialogue, and disappointing visuals left me feeling scammed and disappointed.

The Color Wheel is a truly awful movie. Let's start with the simple fact that the title has nothing to do with the movie, which was shot in black and white for an unknown and almost certainly completely pointless reason. A 'slacker road trip' film, I can buy the idea that the filmmakers were trying to capture some Clerks like magic and failed miserably.

It's the story of a brother and sister on a road trip, played by the couple who made the thing, which gives it a very weird vibe off the bat. The dialog is all improvised, which can be a good thing if the people doing the improvising have talent. This couple does not. If you've ever been stuck on a long car ride with people who think they're witty and won't stop bickering until you have the urge to put an icepick into someone's head (possibly your own) then you have experienced this film. The big Shock! Twist! ending is so unmotivated, and the characters are so unlikeable, that it feels painfully forced and falls flat. And if you haven't walked out of the theater by that point in a vain hope that it might get better you will be thoroughly disappointed. Stay home and watch reruns of the Simpsons instead of subjecting yourself to this mess.

By the end of viewing "The Color Wheel", I was unsure what Alex Ross Perry wanted to say about Colin and JR - the siblings at the centre of his second film. I was unsure what to think of what they had done, what they had been through, and who they are. I think some people might consider that a failing but I think it's his style. He deviates from the norm but not letting us know what we should think. He didn't forget to include the speech in the penultimate scene that would sum up the meaning of the movie. Nor did he accidentally leave out the music that would tell us how to feel about this pair. He left it up to us. And that is harder to deal with.

This is a road-trip film that follows the estranged siblings as they go to pick up JR's stuff from her professor/boyfriend with whom she has recently broken up.

They keep being thrown into situations which are awkward, cringe, and wierd. Often the people they meet are just as weird and alienating as our duo but the magic of cinema means our empathy is with the characters with whom we share the POV. We want better for them. We recognise they might be shallow, lazy, and narcissistic but that doesn't mean they don't deserve happiness. (I mean, thank God.) It's just very hard to understand what happiness might be for these two. The much-discussed climax feels both un-surprising and shocking, totally wrong but maybe the start of something like healing.

Despite this sophistication of theme and character, there are some jarring tonal mismatches that hurt the film. A scene with a motel clerk plays like a bad sketch from the 70s about backwards rural types, and there's a party scene that is aiming for a sort of chaos, but ends up feeling stilted and disconnected, and like none of the other guests are real.

These flaws are easily overlooked. This is difficult viewing, and it won't be for all, but it is smart and interesting and full of something like life.

Pretty funny black and white film follows an argumentative brother and sister combo as he drives her on a road trip upstate to try and get her things out of her ex lover's apt. While in the town she runs into some people they knew back in high school who invite her to crash a party while dragging her brother begging and pleading not to alongside her. While the movie's plot doesn't sound like too much--you get such a strong sense of the two characters personalities (and their gradual realizations about their would be lives) that just watching the two of them argue back and fourth throughout the film's running time proves to be quite funny. Watching them try to get upstate in the first half is a surprisingly funny movie in itself. The two characters'lifelike ability to work up a good rhythm with their dialog while picking on each other keeps you on your toes enough for you to really get into the movie's flow. This also keeps the movie's pace sharp and just quick enough for you to almost miss the more subtle turn the film takes in its second half. When you get to the movie's end, you might be a little jarred, but you'll have definitely enjoyed the ride there at least.

The second half does gets slightly more dramatic, but not anywhere close to really damper the breezy mood the film's already established so far. While the film will inevitably (and somewhat wrongly) get tagged with the "mumblecore" label, the fact is the strong and at times stinging dialog keeps it from being just another indie film about slackery young people talking about nothing. The two lead performances also vary a bit more then the typical non performances found in "mumblecore" type films, and the tone of the whole movie remains firmly in the director's control the entire time without ever sacrificing the humor that sometimes comes with slight character growth. It definitely helps that the slightly Tina Fey looking sister played by the very good Carleen Altman can't help but standout given the focus on her character and the depth given to her by the screenplay. This one's a much more accessible film then you'd ever imagine a mumblecore type movie to be and that could very well be its key to being seen by more people.