Frankie Go Boom

I'm not a comedy fan but I loved this film. I've been disappointed and disillusioned by so-called comedies far too many times, but this film had me laughing loudly and joyfully. Yes, the humor may be crass but it has genuine heart which can only be achieved through great writing and great acting. Frankie Go Boom is not a dumb movie, and neither is the writer/director, or anyone else involved. It is what it is, and what it is, is cute, hilarious, wicked and possibly for some (mainly the humiliated and deranged) cathartic. There is not one mis-cast actor nor one ill-written line. If you can handle transgender, painful family discussions, jokes about addiction and a near-death experience by a farm animal I highly recommend this film.

"How is Jack Knowles seeing a movie of a drunken woman hitting me with her bike helping you get your dream Bruce?" Frankie's (Hunnam) brother Bruce (O'Dowd) has just got out of prison and is back in his life. Frankie is not happy about this. His whole life Bruce has been filming Frankie in the worst possible situations. When Frankie has an embarrassing night with a woman he just met his brother films that too. This simple act spirals out of control and ends up affecting everyone involved, and some who aren't. I'm not sure what I expected from this movie but it wasn't this. The movie is funny and I did laugh a few times but it was different then I thought it would be. The cast is funny and the dialog is funny but it is borderline offensive so be warned if you are easily offended. I don't want to say too much because this is the kind of movie that each scene builds on itself and saying something will ruin the flow but it is funny, just different. Overall, not bad and worth seeing unless you are easily offended. I give it a B-.

Frankie goes boom, sometimes , to me , seems too "real" to be funny, but at that same moment , it makes you laugh, ...so, ...hard to describe,

It has a real "grittiness" to the humor,...I kept saying to myself, this is not going to be funny"...and then finding myself laughing ...

I am on my third watching, so it has my "re watcher" stamp, but still that feeling remains.

"franky goes boom' has the ability to make you uncomfortable, it also has the ability to make you laugh...

I definitely recommend "franky" as a comedy , but you REALLY need to have a sense of humor--if not , you wont enjoy.

It got a 7 out of ten rating , and a re watcher stamp from me .

Frankie does what great comedies do. The movie sets up a very 'unlikely' scenario through which the characters must find their way. The movie doesn't shy away from many, if any of the social issues of our day but Jordan Roberts has taken a very fresh approach and thus each scene has both real hilarity and real humanity. Not enough can be said of the cast. To a person they bring such good work. Stand outs are the lead Charlie Hunnam, and his love interest Lizze Caplan. Of course, both Chris Noth and Ron Perlman fill the screen with their scene stealing roles.

While clearly working with a small, indie budget Roberts and his team have created a quality film with tremendous production values, that can easily compete with movies that cost much more to make.

Every so often, you'll find a fun little independent comedy that comes along and blows every mainstream, nation-wide release out of the water for that year. FRANKIE GO BOOM is not one of these movies. It is a comedy and it does have a little bit of fun to it, but for the most part the movie is one of those middle of the road mediocre comedies that will easily find itself forgotten before it's ever really noticed. This is what makes FRANKIE GO BOOM so disappointing: it's not good and it's not bad enough to be fun. Watching this movie, I cracked a few smiles and might have even chuckled a few times but, when I try to remember any particular standout moment from the movie, I only come up with the nightmarish image of Ron Perlman's butt. This is not the response a good comedy wants from its audience. For those unaware, FRANKIE GO BOOM is about a writer (the titular Frankie, played by Charlie Hunnam) and his ex-drug addict, aspiring filmmaker brother Bruce (Chris O'Dowd). Frankie is called home from his isolated trailer in the middle of Death Valley, where he lives after having been humiliated at his own wedding by his brother. Bruce has spent his entire life tormenting his brother on film, and Frankie is horrified to discover that his brother hasn't given up his film obsession. He almost believes that Bruce might've changed his ways but a chance meeting with a beautiful woman (Lizzy Caplan) and a night of problematic loving leads to the realization that Bruce might've caught the entire embarrassing event on tape. And soon that tape makes its to the Internet and the hands of Bruce's unstable fellow recovering addict (Chris Noth) who happens to be that woman's father. Prepare for a forgettable adventure as Frankie and Bruce try to stop that tape from ruining Frankie's budding relationship or, you know, getting them killed at the hands of a violent psychopath.

I needed a second viewing to determine that this movie wasn't just offensively boring. There are a few funny moments here. I don't remember exactly where they were though. The movie is filled with things that expected to be funny, just because. You might need an example to understand what I'm talking about: Jack, Bruce's addict/actor friend, owns a pet pig. Pigs are funny, yes? Not enough? All right, the pig is launched into a pool and proceeds to throw up on Frankie before his date with Lassie (Lizzy Caplan's character, not the collie). There's no real joke. Just a pig nearly drowning and then puking on Frankie. I get the same vibe from Ron Perlman's character, a post-op transgender ex-convict named Phyllis. We're supposed to laugh because it's Rob Perlman, an admittedly rough-looking dude, in drag. Very bad drag. Phyllis goes on to chat about his/her former genitals kept in a jar and becoming very upset when Frankie doesn't want to see them. This is the whole joke: a particularly unattractive transgender person pushing an uncomfortable man into seeing his pickled junk. There are a lot of little moments like this in the movie, and it doesn't make for a real laugh-out-loud sort of comedy.

It's a shame this movie is so tame because the ingredients are all there for a real fun time. Chris O'Dowd is great. I've been catch more and more of his work since first seeing him as the love interest in BRIDESMAIDS (for the record, the BBC's "The IT Crowd" is great). The problem with his character Bruce is that he's, you know, a sociopath. You almost become as frustrated watching him as Frankie does dealing with him. I find it hard to believe that Bruce doesn't understand the problem with what he does. He becomes a caricature. So does Frankie. Frankie (Hunnam) is pretty one-dimensional. He's just the 'frustrated sibling'… grumbling, sighing, and throwing his hands into the air in exasperation. He doesn't bring anything interesting to the character, though I imagine that's more the writer/director Jordan Roberts' fault. There is no depth to the characters and the movie plods along from gag to gag while eliciting no more than a few chuckles. FRANKIE GOES BOOM wants to be a comedy in the vein of HAROLD & KUMAR but it doesn't come close. The one element of the film that goes so far as to aggravate me is the nonsensical resolution. We spend the entire movie with these two clowns as they chase down anyone that might be able to help them take the movie off-line and prevent Jack from seeing it, and the ending we're given makes no sense whatsoever. I can tell Roberts must have had some problems coming up with a good ending for his movie, so he had a few drinks to help him finish it and just shot whatever ramblings he woke up to in the morning.

FRANKIE GO BOOM is a movie that has come and gone before most people probably had a chance to realize it existed. There is a lot of potential here and it sucks to see it go nowhere, especially when there are some talent people in the cast. Frankie doesn't go boom because FRANKIE is, well, a dud.