The Misandrists

I was at the premiere of this movie in TBLB last week, and REALLY tried to sit through it, convincing myself that it was purposefully awful maybe for satirical reasons, and the director may turn this monotone into something different afterwards.

I was absolutely wrong.

Walked out after 1 hour of this worthless crap cause, you guessed it, nothing changed - I should've done that much earlier on. I tried thinking of one single film worse than this one, and couldn't come up with anything.

You think the book "Fahrenheit 911" is meaningless? Try watching "the misandrists". You think a satire certainly has to be fun and playful? Let Bruce lebruce change your mind. This is the first satire made to be even more unbearable than the subject it, supposedly, poked fun of, which makes you wonder: why doing satire at the first place?

Colourless and cringeworthy dialogues, plastic symbolisms and plots... given that the word movie stands for motion pictures, it is absolutely terrifying to see a movie with no motion depicted in it. Everything was stand-alone with the most robotic interaction in between. Sometimes the director tries to bring some "clever" metaphors and symbolisms, but the delivery is, as it's always been, plastic, abrupt, and irrelevant to the plot.

I want my money back.

I think that it was a bold move to make this one. Mainly because he had to build the whole film from radical feminist theory (which is frequently transphobic) without making it look really bad because then it would make him look anti feministic. So the alternative he found, as i find it, is to slowly transition the essentialist radical feminism to a more performative queer kind of thing. The problem there is that 1) i dont think the film did a excelent job in representing the thought of the radical feminists even though most of the dialogue is composed of exposition and radical feminist rhetoric. I dont think it did a particularly bad job either but the whole porn thing does not make sense. Radical feminists have a very strong opposition to porn and its not just because men are involved in the making. Saying that their subjective view is implicit in the way we see and make porn is more in touch with the actual theory. The reason why i am lingering in this is because the film seems to be a way of trying to bridge the distance between queer and radfem theory and in that i think it underestimates the core disagreements between them. Other than that the film is at times funny and engaging, i had some problems with the soundtrack because i found it to be very boring and stale. Overral it is a fun watch and i hold it in high regard for being as edgy as it is and for trying a lot of things rhetorically.

Definitely not worth the bandwidth to view, very unattractive women (are some actually dudes?!)

Don't assume by the synopsis that there might be anything erotic or fetish, it's just man-hating.

As one review stated, if this movie was made with all sexes reversed, I'm sure there would be arrests.

Greetings again from the darkness. An injured man is attended to by a group of females in an isolated home, and things don't go so well. You might assume this is similar to THE BEGUILED, but you'd be mistaken. Written and directed by Bruce La Bruce, a radical Canadian filmmaker known for his work in extreme Queer Cinema, the film is a cross between satire, social commentary, and proof that one can purposefully make a film far outside the mainstream.

The film begins with two schoolgirls kissing in a field "somewhere in Ger(Wo)many". It's the first of too many uses of twisted non-male vocabulary. We also get "A(Wo)men" to end a prayer, Herstory (instead of History) as a class, and (Wo)manifesto to spell out the mission of the group. The girls spot an injured man and sneak him into the basement of their all-girls home/school. We soon learn they are part of the Female Liberation Army, a group of radical female separatists whose favorite chant is "Down with the patriarchy".

You might think that hiding an injured man in the basement would be the biggest secret of the girls, but again, you'd be mistaken. We are provided with the background for each of the characters, but mostly we are pounded with the anti-male message: "male is superfluous". The girls' lessons include parthenogenesis and learning to quote philosophers such as Schopenhauer, and of course, most of it is satirical and campy ... just not quite campy enough.

Director La Bruce never strays far from shock value: a slow motion pillow fight, gay sex scenes, an unusual (and maybe fetishy) dance scene with eggs, and quite vivid video footage of a particular medical procedure involving the young man discovered in the woods. To cap it off, Big Mother (the leader of this revolutionary group) announces that they will make an all-female porno film because ... what better way to prove we don't need men? Its purpose is to serve as propaganda to spread their anti-male message, and once again, a bit more camp would have helped. Admittedly, this is one film I should have passed on reviewing, as I simply am not one to "wake up and smell the estrogen".

Plot wise, this movie was kinda eh and it was kinda slow moving. Honestly aside from the funny political satire stuff, its not a super great movie. The acting kinda sucked but that made it more funny tbh. I guess you have to appreciate the political humor and not get offended lol.

Basically if you think a political satire called "The Misandrists" sounds funny, well then you'll probably get at least some laughs out of it. It's not gonna win any awards, but it might be a fan favorite in some radical political circles.

Don't take it too seriously. Some of these other reviews are talking about how ugly the women are... but who cares? If you're going to be turned away from a movie because the cast is unattractive, then this movie is not for you.