“It all seems so quaint now”

A fact of life is that the younger generation will always piss on the older one. We will always find new ways to upset our fathers and grandfathers, not necessarily to improve on anything but rather because they can.

So in the digital age we’ve invented the wonders of Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and any other social media platform that allows us to make ourselves fell self important. We’ve also perfected the court jester by making everyone that person. With reality television, which is 90% manufactured, we basically allow for normal people – usually those with little to no talent – to be as belligerent, ignorant and blatantly foolish as they can for us to point and laugh at how stupid they are. If you take that initial “wow” factor and multiply it by the incessant chatter that is the trolls of the internet where people can be as stupid and harsh as they please with little to no consequence. It’s empowered a lot of people, the only problem is most people are idiots who don’t need (or have much use) for that power, I’m probably able to be thrown into that lot but until a Bonnie & Clyde duo such as these come knocking on my door I’ll keep on enjoying that miniscule version of power that I do have with this blog.

So what happens when a genuinely nice guy who just can’t take it anymore finds out he has a tumor? He decides to take it out on those idiots who do their very best lower society with their nonsense.

Comedy is a weird genre. It’s the only one in which characters are forced to assume their absurdity is real and only we, the audience, are allowed to acknowledge its humour. However, what if the absurdity was real? What if what seemed ridiculous as a reality for the character in the film happened to be the reality we reside in? That is the case for this film which is what makes it a great commentary.

We sit and watch Frank (Joel Murray) exist in the world where people are applauded for lacking talent but allowing themselves to stand in the limelight for us to laugh and ridicule them, where we sit and talk about nothing other than what the grand manipulators have channeled down the pipelines for us worthy to discuss and think on those topics and media overflows our brains until they’re all turned into mush. Looking at a lot of the people that Frank and Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr) deem “unworthy” to live and go after makes me worry if they would frown upon my antics here, but the same time isn’t that the point? Isn’t the purpose of a movie like this to make us look back at ourselves and decide whether it’s worth reassessing our actions and how we need to reposition our intentions so as to return to what Frank deems a civilized civilization?

The truth is that I agree with a lot of what this movie has to say about entertainment of today and to some extent the extreme cases of youths, or maybe how youths are portrayed in media. People are coddled and somehow values are changing, but I’ve always felt that those were the few which will exist until they reach a certain stage in life (say 30s) where they’ll either find themselves in a life they didn’t think they wanted or just completely out of whack (back to my thoughts on the character of Mavis in Young Adult) and everyone who is decent and good would somehow find retribution in the world, but maybe that isn’t true. Maybe everyone who’s good and decent will eventually become Frank, as he was at the beginning of the film, just frustrated with life and without the gumption to step up and say “Why?”. I guess only time will teach me whether I’m right or wrong. Regardless though Bobcat Goldthwait does a great job of taking his thoughts – as literal as he puts them through characters’ dialogue at times – and making them into a complete narrative for us all to enjoy and hopefully have us think about our own lives and wonder if hsi thoughts have any meaning to us at all.

Rating : 9.0/10