Twelve_Parallax_Seconds

Break is a movie in the vein of Deliverance and The Hills Have Eyes, but not as good, not by a longshot. It's clearly an amateur film with an almost non-existent budget, but the reason it's bad is mostly due to a multitude of bad decisions made.

The choice to make a cast of germans pretend to be Canadian is one of them. The cast are not the best actors, even in their mother tongue, but to hear them struggle with their broken english makes the dialogue even worse. The scripted dialogue is the kind that probably looks good on paper, but when said out loud, just sounds ridiculous. All dialogue is recorded on set, and is sometimes hard to hear atop of the accents. There's not much music in the film, but there's a couple of songs in the beginning of the film and one at the end that are hilariously badly written, performed and produced and doesn't fit the scenes at all. The song that plays during the ending credits is the best one, but it's so cheerful and bouncy, it nullifies all the gore that took place just a couple of minutes earlier.

Another problem is the cinematography. The camera used is a Canon XH-A1, a camera that was bad already in 2009. The lens is bad, almost blurry, and the colors are weak. The camera is handheld, without any form of stabilizer, neither digital, nor mechanical, and the image is seizure-inducingly shaky. It's not a "found footage" film, so it's unnecessary and there's absolutely no logic to it. Angles and the positioning of actors are equally bad, and you get a lot of shots of butts and backs and car doors and other interesting stuff.

Furthermore, the editor has added a yellow-ish video filter that stays exactly the same throughout the movie, which makes it even uglier and sometimes too dark, even though the entire film is shot in the daytime. Just about every shot is too long and slows down the tempo almost to a standstill. I see why, because a properly cut film would have been around the one hour mark. Now it's barely 90 minutes. The filmmaker even manages to make a rape scene boring.

One of the funniest drawn out scenes is where one of the girls is trying to drive away from a bad guy who's shooting at her with a hunting rifle. Firstly, the car of course doesn't start. Super exciting! When it finally does, she slowly and very carefully backs up and then drives away like there were a pile of priceless porcelain on the roof of the car, all the while being fired upon by the bad guy, whose aim unsurprisingly is on the level of imperial stormtroopers.

I used to watch Arrested Development on TV when i first came out, some fifteen years ago. At the time I thought it was hilarious, smart and edgy. When the new episodes were in the works, I started rewatching the show from season one. To my astonishment, I hated it! Sure, some of the jokes are funny, even though they're sitcom-funny, and many times can't stand on their own. There are a million references to what were going on in the news at the time, and pop culture in general, which kinda makes you feel smart when you get them.

But there are two problems with this show. Firstly, and the minor one, is Ron Howard's narration. For the most part, it's unnecessary, and sometimes an obstacle for the action on-screen. Also, it's always structured the same way. It always starts with "And that's when X realized/discovered/knew that...", and that annoys me to no end. You could easily have a drinking game where you do a shot every time that trope comes along. You would pass out on your couch in no time, covered in vomit. The voice-over is supposed to make what's happening on-screen even funnier, but it's more often irritating than funny. Unfortunately, this is a problem, since the on-screen jokes sometimes actually requires the narration to be funny.

But that's nothing. The major problem are the characters. They all are totally unlikeable! All the characters are selfish and greedy, and that's all they are. Not a single one has any good in them. I'm not saying that a depiction of sociopaths like that is unrealistic, but it doesn't work dramatically. Instead, it makes them flat and uninteresting. Not even Michael Bluth, who's supposed to be the good guy, really cares about anyone but himself, not even his son. The show The Office, that came out a couple of years later also had characters who were like that. But they all had heart, behind all the egoism and obnoxiousness, which made them feel alive and multi-layered.

All this put together: The repeating voice-over tropes, the one-dimensional characters, and jokes that often can't stand on their own, all boils down to what it's really about: Lazy writing. This is a lazy show that people (myself included) for some reason found smart and funny. I really don't know how that happened.

After reading a bunch of negative reviews of this show, I felt I had to write one myself. Most of the reviews seem to be by canadians who know Rick Mercer from other shows, where he supposedly was "a lot funnier. What happened?" I am not from Canada and had never heard about mr Mercer before stumbling upon this show, and I love it.

The show's main premise is that Mercer travels around Canada and meets with people from different places and walks of life. It's a great mix of destinations, and you get to learn a lot about of canadian geography, and the people who live there. Sometimes, he goes to far away rural places, like Inuvik, NT, where he attends the Sunrise Festival. In another show, he goes to The University of Victoria, where he learns about neuroscience. Interspersed with the travel reports are short bits with satirical commentary on canadian political matters.

Mercer is a funny guy and he makes fun of the people he's talking to, and the places he's visiting in his travel reports. The jokes are never nasty, and he always makes himself the butt of the joke in the end. My only criticism is that the constant joking makes the interviews a bit shallow. Then again, the comedy is part of what makes this show great.

The political commentary bits are funny, but are not what makes the show stand out. They feel a bit generical to an outside observer, since it's difficult to identify with the issues when you don't live there. For canadians, they may be spot on, I have no idea. Mercer's outrage for what to me seems to be mild concerns about the canadian government (compared to the US), only makes me feel like Canada is a damn great place to live in.

Coming from northern Europe, I know a lot about US geography and the people there. That annoys me to no end, because I find the USA a lot less interesting than Canada. Unfortunately, I know almost nothing about Canada. For instance, I had never heard about a place called Nunavut. I actually had to google it to realize it was a territory, not a town! So this show is a godsend for a foreigner who wants to learn more about Canada and canadian life in a playful way.