TriviaMania

I won't pretend that there weren't moments that were funny in this film, but overall it was 90 min of people laughing at a guy who's clearly struggling with his mental health.

This movie reminded me of "Swingers" in that I spent most of the movie just wanting the main character to stop doing the things he was doing. This is just like in "Swingers" when Jon Favreau's character keeps calling and leaving message after message that keep getting further down a hole he's trying desperately to dig himself out of. Ultimately, his actions start kind of quirky and awkwardly funny to eventually just being dark and sad.

In truth, though, this movie treats its main character far worse than the character in "Swingers" because it goes way past a neurotic guy making phone calls. 'Craig' is a guy whose life is falling apart around him as he progressively destroys everything important to him in his life.

My best friend, who saw it with me, had this observation...

"Friendship," while it's far less violent, has a lot in common with "Joker."

The comparison makes a lot of sense in that we're watching a man who fantasizes about being accepted by society in general and the people around and he doesn't know how to make that happen, and everything he tries leads to disastrous results.

That paragraph could be used as a synopsis for both films and it fits them completely.

Seeing as how I enjoyed "Joker," perhaps if this weren't advertised as a comedy, I would have liked it better.

The pprimary difference between the two is that in one film, you're led to feel empathy for a character who is losing his mind. In the other, you're meant to laugh at that character.

As someone who lives with mental illness and fights it every day it's disappointing to find so many people thinking 'Craig's' struggle with his mental health is funny. It just shows us that we still have a long road ahead to erase the stigma that mental illness is ridiculous and is something to look down upon.

How is that funny?

Short review?

Boring, outdated, horribly narrated, and zero substance. There's no way anyone that made this is a Weird Al fan.

Ok, more in depth review...

I went into this with at least some excitement as I'm a lifelong 'Weird Al' fan, enjoying both his music and Al as a person. I didn't worry too much about the less than stellar review score, I never really do. That said... This is objectively bad.

First, this doc was released in 2023, which would lead the viewer to assume the interview is recent. In truth, based on some of the things Al talks about, the interview is from 2010-2011. At one point he refers to his upcoming album having a polka that features a Lady Gaga song. This would be Polka Face from his 2011 album Alpocalypse.

Along with it being outdated, it also jumps around a lot making it feel disjointed. For example, after discussing Straight Outta Lynnwood (2006) and Alpocalypse (2011), it comes out of nowhere talking about Poodle Hat (2003) being his first album of the "new millennium."

Then, perhaps the worst part is the absolutely terrible narration. It starts off with her pronouncing My Bologna as "my ba-low-nya." Then, when talking about Al's grammar centric parody of Blurred Lines called Word Crimes, the narrator refers to it as *World* Crimes.

Immediately, that shows you that the people making this are not Weird Al fans. They're just making a short, cheap documentary with no reverence for the subject matter. That's not a recipe for success. The narration is so devoid of emotion that I actually had to look up whether or not this was just a computer generated voiceover.

Speaking of which, as mentioned in my headline, I really do wonder if the narration was written by ChatGPT as, much like the answers you get from programs like that. You can't really trust that it's 100% accurate.

I don't recommend this for anyone, but it's especially not for anyone who is already a big Weird Al fan.

If you're already a fan, the inaccuracies and lack of any affection for Weird Al will frustrate you. If you aren't already a big fan, it does absolutely nothing to persuade someone to become a fan.

If you'd

It's kind of like the music documentary equivalent of those generic compilation albums of popular songs, but performed by uncredited studio musicians from Canada.

If you want to see a decent Weird Al doc, his VH1 Behind the Music is a lot of fun and it can be found on YouTube. Honestly, you'll get more info about Al from watching "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story," and that's a parody of his life.

I kept waiting for it to get good and it just... never... did.

There isn't anything remotely scary until about 40 minutes in and even then it's barely anything. It almost seems like they committed to make this, but they ran out of money and no one really cared.

When you see that a movie is a horror about imaginary friends coming to life and murdering you, you have certain expectations. First, you don't expect there to be practically no kills in it, and the couple there were off-screen.

I genuinely can't figure out what they were going for. I wanted a killer teddy bear and I got Ted's depressed, weird little brother.