Note: This review appeared in slightly different form during the Tribeca Film Festival.
I saw The Wackness last spring at a special screening held for the critics participating in the Moving Image Institute last week. Afterwards, Sony Classics president Michael Barker was asked about critical response to the film thus far. Barker disclaimed that “most major critics” hadn’t yet reviewed the film, but then said something surprisingly candid about the makeup of the film’s detractors. “What’s the demographic of the critics who don’t like it?” he began, starting a statement with a question in expert post-Robert Evans mogul style. “Female. Single. Mothers with teenage kids––they don’t like the movie.”
Who ever is doing research over at Sony deserves a raise. I fit just two of those descriptors, and I don’t like it, either.
Maybe it’s true that even professional critics struggle to get beyond their own natural demographic biases. A certain (very young, very male) segment of the film blogosphere lashed out at Sony for buying The Wackness towards the close of Sundance––not because they didn’t like the film, but because they loved the film so much that they were moved to protect it from what they saw as the risk of a mis-managed mainstream release. I thought this campaign was absolutely inane at the time—in the virtually non-existent narrative buying climate of Sundance 2008, the boys should have been happy that their pet project was picked up at all––but having finally seen the thing, I’m at no loss to explain why those writers have embraced this film. With its full-on, fully uncritical glorification of adolescent male self-indulgence and permanent immaturity, The Wackness is a kind of cinematic embodiment of certain tendencies that make the sub-AICN movie web go round.
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As a former fat guy, I have to salute actor Ron Lester, who went on the Today Show yesterday showing off his slim figure (see the segment here). You may remember Lester as the really, really fat high school football player “Billy Bob” from Varsity Blues, or his identical character from Not Another Teen Movie. Back in 2001, he lost 315lbs. — 43lbs. of it extra skin that had to be removed — and even lost 2 inches worth of height (thanks to the weight lost from his head). He did this by gastric bypass surgery and it was primarily for heath reasons, but damn if he doesn’t look much better, too.
The problem is, according to the person submitting this story to Fark.com, he may now be handsomer but he may also have cost himself his acting career. Obviously he had been employed in the past for his physique more than his acting talent, and now he’s missing that thing that guaranteed his being hired (his only significant movie post-surgery was Karate Dog). Certainly he’d rather be alive, though, than typecast. It’s not like he just went out and got plastic surgery thinking he’d be better off in an industry obsessed with good looks. But I did immediately think of Jennifer Grey and Meg Ryan as two prime examples of how physical changes, which were intended to be favorable, ended up more damaging career-wise. …Read more
This Hollywood Reporter story about Magnolia/Magnet’s acquistition of the Michael Rappaport psycho-pharma superhero comedy Special has a major inaccuracy: Gregg Goldstein says the film “premiered last month at Sundance,” but actually, it premiered two years ago at Sundance, where alongside Wristcutters: A Love Story, it was the subject of much “WTF? If THAT sold, why didn’t THIS sell?” buzz in the wake of the massive Little Miss Sunshine deal. The fan boy sites were, predictably, all over it, but it also earned glowing praise from international publications, and from director Jason Reitman, who was at the festival with his own Thank You For Smoking.
So what made Magnolia suddenly interested now? Goldstein says it’s finally getting picked up because Rappaport has a TV show and co-star Josh Peck is expected to break out via a film that *did* premiere at Sundance 2008, The Wackness. I’d say the latter probably has more to do with it than the former, but then, I thought The War at Home had been canceled like five years ago. But I guess this means we can expect a Special release somewhere on the calendar near Peck’s other film, in order to capitalize on The Wackness‘ Sony Classics-footed publicity budget.
You can watch Special’s circa-Sundance 2006 trailer here.
