Entertainment

A fascinating and ambitious mess, with echoes of David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch and Stanley Kubrick among others. Beautifully shot and full of careful and striking lighting and compositions, this tragic-comic character study of an abrasive, sad, utterly unsuccessful stand up comic has a number of surreal scenes and images that are deeply affecting and/or quite funny.

There are also a number of scenes that seem needlessly repetitive, or working way too hard to be self-consciously weird. And the film definitely feels long.

Back on the plus side, it's made more complex and interesting by the fact that the stand up character in his off-stage real life is outwardly nothing like the hyper-annoying, aggressively unfunny and gross person he plays on stage. He's quiet and introverted and seems more terribly and dangerously depressed than angry. However, under the surface the comic and his on-stage alter ego share a desperate sense of alienation from other human beings, and it's that terrible modern isolation that's at the heart of the film.

Extending that exploration, 'Entertainment' plays with an interesting meta idea. What if an arty, self-referential surrealist comic like Andy Kaufman (or this film's lead Gregg Turkington) spent their career playing their most difficult and abrasive alter-ego like Kaufman's Tony Clifton (or star Turkington's Neil Hamburger, who is the basis of the on stage persona here), but instead of playing for crowds of hip and 'knowing' urban young people 'in on the joke', they only got to do that act in sad, barely populated working class dive bars out in the middle of the California desert, where the inside joke is totally lost for the audience. It raises interesting questions about perception and comedy, and how much of our enjoyment of hip ironic distance in modern entertainment is a cover for something wounded and broken inside us.

It's a difficult film I'd be hesitant in recommending to most other people, and that I have my own reservations about. Yet I find that since I've seen it, moments, images and performances are aggressively haunting me in a powerful way, and make me look forward to seeing it again.

I just saw this and... no idea. Parts of it are truly intriguing and fascinating to watch while still being kind of uncomfortable to watch, and other parts are just kind of obnoxious and unsatisfying. I totally didn't recognize Tye Sheridan at first, truly a chameleon (and should have been used more, if just to increase my interest). At parts the film seemed like it was on the verge of true magic, but my interest was never fully captured because it (intentionally) keeps itself at such a distance. It seems like this year I've seen many films like this, and most of them haven't stuck with me at all. Perhaps this will follow in that pattern. Don't know exactly what my rating should be

Audiences not braced for what Rick Alverson's Entertainment has to offer will be doomed for an unpleasant and gruelling experience. This is anti-entertainment if anything, not in the sense that it uses anti-jokes but the comedian protagonist is on the lowest rung of humour. Using cheap sight gags, resorting to insulting the audience, taking uncalled-for hits at celebrities and using not-so-funny voices, the laughs the characters do get are cheap. This comedian is a 19 year routine from lead actor Gregg Turkington, otherwise known as Neil Hamburger, but that backstory has no relevance to the film's narrative as he's otherwise unnamed. It's performance art, but also satirical as it's not far from the truth of what some comedians actually resort to in their acts. In that sense, it's a study on what's considered entertainment, why people are drawn to it and what it means to people.

The film chronicles a cycle of repetitive sequences that grow darker in despair. The comedian attends novelty tours on his journey, browsing at eye-sore mechanical marvels in the middle of the desert, often away from the main group and guide. Then he performs at third-rate gigs such as dingy bars, often saying how he's travelled from miles away but never where from exactly, and gets upset when the audience don't laugh at his jokes. That's all part of his act, however, but it doesn't get them more comfortable. His warm-up act is an amateur mime artist played by Tye Sheridan, though how they're travelling together remains a mystery. He calls his estranged daughter before bed in hopes that she'll pick up and reconnect, but it's ostensibly in vain. Some other characters take him aside, such as detours from his wealthy cousin played by John C. Reilly, an example of success, and Michael Cera in a four minute cameo as a hustler who wants company.

It feels like the films of Roy Andersson by way of David Lynch as a surrealistic nightmare. From constant stumbles, the comedian is on a broken American dream, both as a father and as a budding entrepreneur with his comedy act – which it must be noted, is far from his stoic self. He seems willingly isolated offstage, but abrasive when he's onstage. If comedy is an escape for some, is that necessarily a good thing? It can be cryptic in these scenes that don't tie in together, but they're all expressing his anxieties and failure in his career and fatherhood. Almost every gig he does is greeted by an apathetic 'good show' from the manager while he looks dead inside. The tragedy is off-screen and internal but it's palpable, highlighted by the washed-out and carefully composed photography. Entertainment is a very unsettling film, and at one point near its middle I found myself tested by it, but it's thoroughly profound for those who want something challenging and hauntingly beautiful.

8/10

Read more @ The Awards Circuit (http://www.awardscircuit.com/)

Roy anderson characters if they revealed them selves in a clearer way, arther fleck/joker if he was a real person these are what you'll get from Entertainment in addition to the melancholic and depressing sceneries. But best of it is the intense, surreal and haunting soundtrack. But as I think it's one of those movies that you'll either love it or hate it no grey area here.

There is no end to the main characters misery in "Entertainment". It is uncertain to me whether the writers and filmmakers are aiming for a portrait of a beaten dog worth some compassion or a predator feeding on himself and everyone around him, as every well meaning word and action in his direction is ironically swallowed whole followed by a quenched belch. I'm having a hard time finding any love for him at all but am forced to see the story through. In the spirit of Brecht, this comedian have the choice to quit, face reality and stop being the hero that saves the day. But of course, it wouldn't be brechtian for him to do so. That choice is up to me and you. How low can you go and keep on not laughing? And when that laugh comes, is it the cleansing sound of a soul, or the croaking of crows on a corpse? This is tricky: the rating depends upon how aware the producers of "Entertainment" are of it's message. I don't know them personally so I can't be the judge of that, but I hope they give a F*** about the moral of the choice. Otherwise, this movie is just one more self loathing, self pitying, sexist and childishly narcissistic wet nightmare from a masochistic comedian of the male sex, caught in his own cynical material; artsy in the bad sense. But even so, this movie is a perfect kick-off for an interesting discussion.