Teddy Bears' Picnic

I saw this movie in Santa Cruz, with Harry presiding. Fabulous movie for those into politics, and those who know what "the Grotto", and Bohemian club are. Harry actually visited the Grotto as a guest, then made the movie. It's "low-budget", of course there aren't many people out there who would back a movie like this, and Harry did it himself. It tells well of their "bohemian" getaways! This is the way the corporate of America spend their time, at our expense!! (You can pick out who is whom.)Harry is not in it as much as I would prefer, yet Michael McKean picks up where he leaves off. I love the part about the "resident artist"! Watch this film, it sits well with any Michael Moore documentary. I wholly recommend this movie to people who are not Republicans.

The normally brilliant Harry Shearer stumbles with Teddy Bears' Picnic. All the components are present for a potentially hilarious and telling mockumentary-style satire on the famous Bohemian Grove, where an odd mix of New World Order power mongers, artists, pseudo intellectuals, and quasi-celebrity mix in a state of misogynistic, sophomoric, and fraternal abandon. An inspired and willing all-star cast combined with dozens of hilarious inside-joke instants, give the piece great scene-by-scene potential. But sadly, the work as a whole simply disintegrates into a surprising state of comic mistiming and sloppy direction. "Surprising" because of the intrinsic talent involved in the project. It seemed to me that this made-for-TV piece was conceived at breakfast and filmed by dinnertime, cobbled together and performed in one take. It is as if we are looking at the "dailies" rather than the final piece. With basically strong comic material, just a little TLC with the plot flow and a more careful tuning of the comic timing (in direction, acting, and editing) could have made this into a real cult classic. Should be remade to pack the real comic punch the material contains.

This film adds up to much less than the sum of its parts, and by parts I'm referring to the fantastic and star-studded cast. With Fred Willard, Michael McKean, George Wendt, Bob Einstein, the guy from Sledge Hammer (sorry I forget his name but he's great) and a ton of other people I am surprised at how bad the movie turned out. I think the big problem was with the script (lacks laughs and isn't a very meaty story, it's just a bunch of gags one after another and they aren't that funny) and mostly with the production value, the sound and video are of very poor quality. This cast deserves better and so does Harry Shearer, who also wrote and directed this. Maybe he was busy working on the Simpsons or something but he is usually much more funny than this movie would have you believe. 3 out of 10.

I was fortunate enough to see this film at one of its world premieres as part of the St. Louis International Film Festival. Unfortunately, Harry Shearer could not come and talk to us about it, as was scheduled, but from what I hear, his make-up Q&A session a few days later was riotous.

Naturally, this comes as no surprise. In the fashion of earlier works such as *This Is Spinal Tap,* *Waiting For Guffman,* and *Best In Show* (not all of which had anything to do with Shearer himself, necessarily), the comedy relies heavily upon quirky yet somehow realistic characters in situations to match. Improvisation and satirical exaggeration combined with portrayal of bizarre characters by some unexpected performers and comic pacing that only someone like Shearer could pull off make this one of the better comedies of the year. While I'm unsure of how well-distributed the film will be, all fans of the aforementioned films should make an effort to see it.

I found myself consciously suppressing chuckles because several of the early jokes were racial slurs designed to make you cringe, but the movie audience was decidedly multi-ethnic. I bet it fares better on home video where the audience won't be so self-conscious. George Wendt has the juciest role as a general who goes overboard in trying to cover up Zambizi Glen's, and his own, secret. My personal favorites are Howard Hessman's portrayal of a grossly-overqualified theatrical director, and the actress playing the TV news producer. Morgan Fairchild has a very welcome, if small role.

I wanted to see this in a theater because it was shot in 480P video. My amateur's eyes couldn't see any difference between this and traditionally filmed movies-- quite surprising because this is lower resolution than even HDTV.