Exit Through The Gift Shop

I fear this film has been sold incorrectly. Terms like documentary, satire and “Oscar nominated” are battered about this film, when in reality it is much more comedy drama than anything else. This film took me by surprise and is one of the freshest, genuinely witty comedies I’ve seen in years.

The film begins following Thierry Guetta, an eccentric, obsessive compulsive Frenchman who films everything. He quietly follows various “street artists” and his indoctrination into this underground circle is an entertaining little flick all by itself. Thierry is comic perfection, bumbling about pretending to be real deep when really he is much more of a mad man than a genius. The various, throwaway facts the film lays onto him are brilliant, for example he purchases poorly sewn clothes from Eastern Europe, imports them into America and sells them as designer.

This rather foreshadows the amazing second act. Under the recommendation from “Banksy”, the mysterious artist who directs the film, Thierry sets about “making his own art”. It starts innocently enough, but soon he is holding a pompous art event with the worst knock offs of street art imaginable. The joy of this film is watching an utter buffoon completely destroy the art industry. In one scene a “customer” phones up looking for an “original” from the exhibition, without even looking at any of his non-existent work. Lazily Guetta has someone else photoshop another crude picture, print it fresh and sell it for thousands. It’s hard to know what’s real and what’s fake, I’m fairly certain Guetta himself is a fictional role, but it certainly looks like the “exhibition” was a genuine success purely from a con. Even if this film absolutely bombs, I’m sure the stunts alone have made Banksy absolutely minted.

This is to art what Spinal Tap was to rock, only much, much better. There may be less “turn it up to 11” worthy dialogue but the long list of hijinks and the likely hood that too much of this is true than there really should be makes it better than some daft Stonehenge skit.

This is on Channel 4 tonight if you’re interested, and if you think it sounds too pretentious, trust me, it’s not.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Oh Scott Pilgrim what went wrong? This film deserved big bucks but didn’t even make it’s production cost, let alone advertising or a profit. I guess some people didn’t get it. The adverts made it look weird, less like a straight forward comedy and more madness. Which is correct I suppose? Then again Michael Cera is indie crack, he should have drew in people by the flocks. You could argue the target audience just got it from Pirate Bay, but surely this is something you’d want to watch on the big screen. I mean this film did half as well as Bridesmaids and is atleast twice as good.

Essentially Scott Pilgrim is a glossy coming of age nerd rom com with awesome CGI battles every now and then with a bad ass soundtrack. This film is dense though; the plot cheekily starts slowly and innocently before losing its shit on the opening credits and rocketing through joke after joke. The comedy is good too, there is plenty of slapstick and absurd humour but the film is no stranger to wit. There’s this one seen when Scott tells Ramona (love interest B) “I dreamt about you, is that odd” to which replies “No, there’s an interdimensional rift through your head I often use to speed up delivery (to Amazon.ca no less)” that reminds me distinctly of Douglas Adams, I’m surprised no one has coined this as a “Hitchikers Guide” for the YouTube generation. Pop up boxes and HUD crop up with fantastic one liners and visually this is one of the absolute best films ever, for a comedy it’s totally unique to have twin headed techno dragons fight punk rock monsters (this happens by the way) The number of memorable seems is silly high too, this is a film I’ve watched 3 times already and could easily watch again.

I’ve heard people complain the characters are poorly fleshed out and hard to relate with, but I just can’t buy that. Scott himself is cleverly not the 80’s fat weezing nerd but instead good looking but immature nerd. Cera carries off the charm to make him an affable man baby and you never doubt he loves Knives (love interest A) and Ramona; it’s just that his situation is born out of awkwardness not malice. Ramona isn’t shallow either, she plays mystique but some scenes clearly show her to be just as fragile and immature as Scott. Everyone argues Scott should have gone with Knives but ironically for the youngest she’s the most mature one, wanting Scott to meet her parents and talking about relationship; she sums it up at the end “Go to [Ramona], anyways, I’m too cool for you”. Furthermore everyone has an arc in this, the drummer gets over Scott, the coffee waitress gets back with the lead singer, the nerd gets to be in the band he adored, I could go on and on. The supporting cast play blinders, with most characters stealing scenes. Special kudos to Kieran Culkin, who is hilarious in every second of screen time. It also doesn’t hurt that the females are gorgeous either, too often it's hard to see why the couple must fight for each other but I’d risk my life 7 times for a punk Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

I recommend those who haven’t seen it definitely check this out. I also recommend those who saw it and don’t put it in their top 5 comedies watch it again, I have no idea how you managed that.

I’d also like to recommend the sound track, which is a really good Beck album with fantastic contributions, including a James Brown esque gospel ode to adolescence, a sleazy bed track, a grand Evanesence-ish pop song and the best 8-bit song you’ll here anywhere. If you don’t know who Beck is you must absolutely check it out, the man is a genius. It isn’t a soundtrack really either, much more a collection of really good songs with a similar theme from different artists, which makes for a terrific album.