Flags don't get much redder than this title; but to the film's credit, it's a little more amusing, and less annoying, than I was expecting. It wasn't the struggle to finish many of its concept-heavy, cameo-laden indie comedy peers are. Perhaps the fact that this film was shelved for a couple years gave them the chance to do some judicious editing.
If you've seen the trailer, you can already guess that Dan Harmon has all the best lines. Apart from that, it's a lot of familiar stand-up, improv and sitcom folk packed together trying to out *Wacky* each other. It's the kind of movie where minor characters are dressed as mimes or animal costumes just to give them some kind of arbitrary distinction. Everyone screams and shouts at each other so much it becomes rote, though the cast brings enough charisma on board to at least carry you through to the end. Ultimately, if this was just a little more clever, it would all feel a lot more worth your time. This film's chosen volume over wit.
There's a scene fairly early on, for example, where two reliably funny comedians, Maria Bamford and Brian Posehn, break into an apartment, dressed in silly costumes, and face off angrily against each other. But they don't have any actual jokes; there's no improvisation or banter. They don't get to bring any of their celebrated talents to their scene, just recognizable faces. Apart from that, any two completely anonymous extras could've played these fleeting roles just as well. And that wasted potential runs its course through the entire picture.
The first half works better than the second half, where everybody just seems obligated to carry out the absurdist plot to its logical conclusion after the story had run out of steam. I think a lot of the problem lies in the fact that Kate Micucci is our lead and the audience's avatar until about mid-way through when she just goes irrationally insane, making decisions that don't even make sense for her character. At that point, there's no longer anybody for us to relate to on-screen. The secondary comic relief characters wind up being the most groundedly human.
Maybe that was an intentional inversion. I can imagine the screenwriters bragging that, by the end, the protagonists are the antagonists and the comic relief are the emotional anchors - nobody will see that coming! But unfortunately, that means we spend the the last act dribbling towards the obvious, inevitable conclusion no longer invested in what happens to any of these people. And even that would probably be fine if we were laughing along the way.
As much as this film struggles to stand out as outlandish and wildly original, it's the same as most comedies that pass through without leaving a lasting impression. Not enough funny moments spread across its feature-length running time. This probably would've been a great little, two-part Funny Or Die video, or a fifteen minute Adult Swim one-off. Then we'd all be sharing it with each other, burning it to DVD and telling each other how genius it is. But as it is, by Stage Four, this Storsh had run completely out of Bliss.
