Sunny Side Up

Have you ever wanted to see an American hippie pretend that she's an Indian lifestyle guru hosting her own reality show and guiding gullible people stupider than herself? While I can't imagine anybody is actually looking to watch something like that, that is the premise of "The Love Guide". The "guru" is Angelica Lovecraft (Parker Posey) but she's not even the stupidest character. That honour goes to Millie (Kathryn Erbe).

Millie is a chicken farmer who has won a prize for Best Chicken, who knows what kind of award that is. She comes from a long line of chicken farmers but she doesn't seem to know any of the costs or requirements of running a sustainable farm. She thinks it would be a good idea to invite the reality show out to her farm. She does think that she will get money for it, but shouldn't she have some other kind of reason? But she doesn't think that much. She didn't even bother asking her husband what he thought about it. Cue the marital arguments that are somehow supposed to be funny.

The entire film is made shoddier than the worst made-for-TV movies, and unfortunately the acting isn't much better. Posey is way over-the-top as this irritating and manic hippie who actually believes she should be revered. Erbe must have been trying to match Posey's lunacy as Millie was all over the map with her responses to all the nonsense occurring around her (and caused by her).

"The Love Guide" puts ridiculous characters in an environment they apparently know nothing about, even though they should. The reality show producers think this is something that people in middle America want to see but nobody has a sense of humour so poorly refined that they could find this funny.

Let's say that:

1)You adore Parker Posey and have set yourself a goal to watch every movie she makes; 2) Hippie caricatures, no matter how diluted, always give you a chuckle; 3) No subject matter is too trivial for you; 4) Zaniness for the sake of zaniness, even without context or continuity, is AOK with you; 5) Most importantly, you have gone to the library to borrow a movie and this is the only movie available that you haven't already seen or affirmatively don't want to see.

If your answer to all these questions is a resounding "YES" then please watch this movie.

If there was a message in this movie, it was totally lost on me. I really liked the concept of "chicken farmer goes free-range" but the implementation (bunch of coops set on a pasture) was ill-conceived and poorly executed. Just a little research (hey! google it!) on the topic of "chicken farming" could have made this movie considerably better.

Millie places a number of coops on a pasture (evidently without securing these small structures to the planet) and they get hammered by a storm. What was the point of this?

Guru follower builds a small scale model of the chicken farm and blows on it. Following day, Millie comes home to find her farm devastated by high winds. What was the point of this? If it was to allude to a cosmic connection between the guru groupie and mother nature, it fell flat. There was virtually no character development for this guy.

I can't help but feel something was lost on the cutting room floor as there is no substance to the film. Throw in a sub-plot of Millie's husband having a suspicious rendezvous with a beautiful blonde only to have it resolved with zero passion and a minimum of dialogue and I'm left wondering why I spent any time at all on this movie.

Being a fan of Parker Posey from the hilarious Christopher Guest reality films "Waiting for Guffman", "Best in Show" and "A Mighty Wind", I figured I'd like this film. It had a similar Guestian approach, taking the guise of a documentary that satirizes some exceptionally kooky characters (Posey's taking the kooky cake), but somehow it was a letdown.

Being something of a hippie myself, I love seeing spoofs of hippie characters, like Michael Shannon in "Grand Theft Parsons", or half the cast of Peter Sellers' "The Party". Here, Posey did a good job, but I feel like she didn't have enough good biting lines, and instead she had to rely on general goofy expressions, big arm movements and slapstick for the role. Only 1 or 2 funny lines stick out (like when she takes the camera crew to the dock to meet Millie's husband and says, "now we're going to visit Millie's husband who is working. He's a lobster MURDERER.") I got a laugh out of that delivery. But other than that, I felt like I was constantly waiting for Parker to deliver a good zinger that never came.

The other characters were far too straight-laced to be of much interest, and the story itself was rather uneventful. Oddly enough, the main thing I got out of this movie was not entertainment, but rather the social message that warehoused chickens are abused & tortured, and we should each do our best to support free-range chicken farms, or not buy eggs at all. That itself is a worthy accomplishment of this film, but I just wish there was more entertainment value.

If you want a full dose of Parker Posey's comedic talents, check out the Christopher Guest films I listed above. "The Love Guide" is an OK film to watch on a lazy afternoon, but it didn't really tickle me the way I hoped it would.