The Exquisite Corpse Project

I almost never sit down in a theater to watch a film because I find that most formulaic films just don't hold my attention long enough to sit still in a seat for the entire length of the movie. I normally rent at home, so I can get up and wander around when i lose interest. The Exquisite Corpse Project held me in my seat the whole time. I laughed out loud (along with most everyone in the theater) throughout much of the film. And it is fascinating to watch this movie that is like multiple movies woven into one. A film with this many story lines going at once and interwoven the way it is could very easily be a complete and total mess, but brilliant vision, creativity, and one heck of an editing process makes this a film that takes you on a wonderfully wild ride that leaves you at the end completely entertained and having had an experience way beyond the norm of most movie experiences. If you want to see a film that is unlike any other film and full of originality, creativity, mad wit, personality, and brilliant editing, you have to see the Exquisite Corpse Project.

When I first heard that Olde English was making a movie, I was thrilled. When I saw the trailer, I was ecstatic. And when I actually saw the film, I was never disappointed - it lived up to my expectations and more. It's a movie written by five friends who haven't worked together in a while, each penning fifteen pages. Here's the catch, though - each writer could only see the previous five pages of the script. This leads to strange, whimsical, and often hilarious twists and turns in the plot and characterization. All this chaos held together by interviews conducted by the director who had given the writing assignment in the first place.

If the writers were a little less funny, or knew each other a little less well, The Exquisite Corpse Project could have been a cute novelty or passable experiment. With wit like Olde English's, though, it manages to be laugh-out-loud funny all the way through, with surprisingly heartwarming moments peppered in between scenes. It's fun just to watch the friends banter through their writing and interviews (such as Joel's writing of a sucktastic fifteen pages just to spite Ben, the director), and by the end, you're aware that you just witnessed friendships evolve. That is, between picnic scenes and Not-Dogs and snake venom and ironic mustaches.

Watching the film, you feel like you know a little bit more than every writer for having watched the segment before theirs, but you also feel like an insider, like you're right there with them at the final read through or trying to decipher the five pages they've been given. It's a collaborative project, not just for the writers, but for the audience as well. Sitting in the theater and watching the crazy plot twists unfold, we had just as much fun watching and laughing through the movie as it looks like Olde English did making it.

This is a really thoughtfully edited and original film that artfully combines an unusual film premise (an exquisite corpse game--see the description) with an often surprisingly touching documentary of its making. In the end, what would at first take appear to be a self-indulgent industry game emerges as a delicately crafted homage to the creative process that is friendship. Remarkably, even the exquisite corpse film maintains some degree of narrative cohesiveness, and where it doesn't, it is usually the result of a deft editing hand highlighting the particular artistic (or non-artistic) style of each writer. Enjoyable and unusual--I highly recommend.

I'll give this movie credit for doing something different, but as you would expect from the premise, writing a script like a game of telephone, it fails. Actually it starts off well enough, the first segment is OK, if contrived and too-cute. And the second segment is so deliberately bad it's acceptable. But they really needed to bring the talent to redeem it by some miracle after that point, but it becomes mired in silliness without being funny, and the behind-the-scenes segments are just not interesting. Assuming it's not fictional, and the collaboration really was blind, I'll congratulate them on their integrity, and I'm sure they amused themselves, but making a bad movie is not much of an accomplishment.

The film funny and quite clever. I found the idea of exquisite corpse interesting, especially in this context... the story itself being one dimension and the relationships shared between friends being another. The story line moves from one voice to another as an exquisite should, sometimes incoherently, but always with cadence keeping the wit in the dialogue sharp and snappy. I felt that by the end of the film, it had grown into something more than a group so friends trying to put together one last project. It became a looking glass into the relationships of this group of friends. Great independent films that I would fully recommend!