Writer(s): Alvarez, Tim Heidecker, and Gregg Turkington
Starring: Gregg Turkington, John C. Reilly, and Tye Sheridan
I like Neil Hamburger. Like, a lot. His “stand-up” performance is one of only a handful of live shows, music or otherwise, that I have ever been to. His comedy is an acquired taste, and one that most people probably don’t have any interest in acquiring: Neil’s entire set consists of telling question-and-answer jokes to the audience, gagging and coughing loudly to cover the silence in between the question and the answer, to prevent his fans from revealing the answer before he can (example joke: “Why does Arby’s lather their sandwiches in mayo? (long pause featuring constant hacking and coughing while crowd shouts out answers). So they’re easier to flush down the toilet!”). Not surprisingly, he is also awkward, presenting himself as a sad-sack loser who frequently sobs in between jokes that are of particularly poor taste, blaming the audience for making him tell it. He occasionally berates audience members who are too loud, unleashing vulgar, brutal tirades that are probably more authentic to him than we realize. You would think it would be a thankless, dead-end job, but he has opened for acts such as Faith no More (another one of my faves), and Tenacious D, and has also been booed at quite a few festivals, comprised of audiences that aren’t quite in on the joke. It’s a shtick that shouldn’t be funny for more than a couple of minutes, but I find him absolutely hilarious.
What makes the whole setup even more “endearing” (for lack of a better term) is that Neil Hamburger is actually a character played by Gregg Turkington, a well-respected member of the music underground. He ran Armadillo Records for a few years in the early-to-late ‘90s. He was a tour manager for Link Wray, and one of my personal favorite bands, Mr. Bungle. He was a founding member of the musical duo Zip Code Rapists, collaborated with Trey Spruance (also a member of Mr. Bungle) in his band Secret Chiefs 3, has provided voices to mostly one-off characters in several animated shows, including “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” and “Adventure Time”, made small appearances in films like Ant-Man, as well as in television shows, like the series finale of "CSI", and ran the clever blog “Warm Voices Rearranged: Anagram Record Reviews” with fellow musician Brandon Kearney. This is one of those guys that manages to be both prolific, yet criminally underrated at the same time.
If you’re already lost on any part of the above two paragraphs, then I'll be frank: Entertainment is not for you. It wasn’t for my wife, who doesn't share near the affection for Mr. Turkington that I do, and it almost wasn’t for me. I really can’t see this movie appealing to anyone that isn’t a huge fan of Mr. Hamburger, because when he isn’t telling his trademark “jokes”, then he’s just walking around, as his “real-life” alter ego Gregg Turkington, in a variety of barren desert settings. It starts off intriguing, but once the formula repeats itself over and over again, it gradually threatens to become an endurance test; thankfully, it redeems itself a little bit toward the end, when his character goes off the deep end, and the events, and people, surrounding him get weirder and weirder.
There really isn’t a plot to speak of, at least in the traditional sense; I wasn’t joking when I said that this film more or less follows a rather repetitive formula: Gregg travels to a new location in the desert in his old white car, then there are a few shots of him looking quiet and depressed as he gets ready in the dressing room of some dingy bar, usually while the character credited as “Eddie the Opener” (an intentionally-terrible mime, played by Tye Sheridan) performs on stage; occasionally, the two come together to have an awkward conversation. After this, he goes to his hotel room, where he calls his daughter on the phone and leaves her a message about how his day went. It’s always a message; even she doesn’t seem to want to hear from her father anymore. Then, he usually stares off into the distance for a while longer before going to sleep.
When he wakes up, he usually takes some kind of a local tour (of an oil field, or automobile graveyard, or some similar “attraction”), where we get more quiet stares into space. If we’re lucky, we might actually get some human interaction, though even those instances get more and more bizarre as they slowly get more frequent. In the beginning, he meets up with his cousin, John (John C. Reilly, who you just knew had to show up here somewhere), whom he hasn’t seen in a decade. John thinks like a businessman, and is constantly thinking of ways that he can help Neil gain larger crowds for his shows (he also appears to be just as sincere praising his cousin’s work, as he is completely baffled by the material). But Neil doesn’t seem to have any interest in bigger or better things; as depressed as he always appears to be on the outside, he is apparently more content than we think. Either that, or he’s simply just unmotivated.
One night, he has a brutal encounter with a woman at a bar; after she causes a disruption in his set, he goes off on her the way he does anyone daring enough to interrupt him. However, she doesn’t take it well at all, and throws her drink at him. This only makes him more mad, as he verbally tears into her with a reckless abandon, going above and beyond the norms of decency; he crosses the line here from a “mock hatred” of his audience to genuine contempt, and watching the result is genuinely uncomfortable. She confronts him outside after the show, breaking his glasses and tearing his shirt. Oh, the life of an entertainer. (As an aside for the uninitiated, his performances in real life are way more fun and less cruel than they appear on here; unless he’s the opening act, or playing at a festival, the audience is always in on the joke and play along accordingly. If the audience isn’t familiar…well, things feel more dangerous for Neil than anyone in the audience.)
The film’s minimalistic style, the lack of a narrative, and Neil’s cringe-inducing jokes are going to be enough to turn off a vast majority of its audience. The constantly-droning score doesn’t really help much, as it always sounds like it's hinting at ominous events that never happen. Unsurprisingly, critics—who always have to feed off of each other and pretend to get things that they don’t actually get, much like a wine connoisseur pretends to have the capability of differentiating a 100-year-old bottle of Dom Perignon from a recent vintage of a grocery store brand, simply based on taste—have taken to it, while audiences seem to loathe it. That’s about what I would expect from a film that seems to try very hard to capture the desolation and loneliness of its main character. Occasionally, it works, but it relies on silence and empty stares far too many times to convey its message, as if having it take place completely in a seemingly endless parade of desert didn’t already establish that from the outset.
I hinted at it earlier, but things get really bizarre toward the end, with a nervous man named Tommy (played by Michael Cera) waiting for The Comedian (as he is credited in the movie; he is never referred to by name) and asking to stay with him in his car. But even scenes like this, ones that could have some kind of emotional resolution or resonance, are treated with a blatant indifference that borders on maddening; after the rather mysterious encounter, in which Tommy keeps insisting that The Comedian offer him some company until help arrives for his broken-down car, and The Comedian’s tolerance seems to be reaching an inescapable boiling point, it simply cuts to the next scene. There’s no resolution, and no mention of what either of them decided to do. I get that passiveness is simply part of its style, but the distance with which it treats its main character only serves to further alienate the viewer.
Despite the film's overall tediousness, I have to say that I actually kind of liked it, though again, it all has to do with my familiarity of the material (and its subject) moreso than actual execution. The ending, which I mentioned earlier, also helped to save it a bit for me; that’s when things start to go off the deep end, culminating in an emotional moment that works, even if it is simply because it’s one of the only concrete things that happens in the entire film. Unfortunately, it still manages to ramble on a bit longer, culminating in an abrupt ending that was more frustrating than anything else. When all is said and done, the final joke ends up on the viewer; then again, maybe that was the whole point all along.
RECAP: Much like this review, Rick Alverson's Entertainment is wandering, and overlong, and pretentious, and repetitive, and boring, and it feels like an “inside joke” more than a cohesive movie. But I have a certain fondness for the character of Neil Hamburger (a stand up “comic”, played by Gregg Turkington), so I tolerated the ensuing nothingness a lot more than most will be able to. In fact, many have dismissed this as complete garbage, something that, looking from the eyes of someone else, I can’t really argue. The soundtrack is actually really good, the few times that actual music is heard, while the droning, electronic score, which seems to suggest an ominous threat that isn’t there, is overused. If you’re a fan of Neil, then you might find something to like here; if you’ve never heard of him, hate him, or are indifferent to his existence, then you stand to gain nothing by watching this.
RATING: 5.5/10
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