En route to meet his estranged daughter and attempting to revive his dwindling career, a broken, aging comedian plays a string of dead-end shows in the Mojave desert.
Director:
Rick AlversonWriters:
Rick Alverson, Rick Alverson, 3 more credits »Stars:
Gregg Turkington, John C. Reilly, Tye Sheridan |See full cast and crew »Storyline
En route to meet his estranged daughter and attempting to revive his dwindling career, a broken, aging comedian plays a string of dead-end shows in the Mojave desert.
Entertainment Movie Reviews
Audiences not braced for what Rick Alverson's Entertainment has to offer will be doomed for an unpleasant and gruelling experience. This is anti-entertainment if anything, not in the sense that it uses anti-jokes but the comedian protagonist is on the lowest rung of humour. Using cheap sight gags, resorting to insulting the audience, taking uncalled-for hits at celebrities and using not-so-funny voices, the laughs the characters do get are cheap. This comedian is a 19 year routine from lead actor Gregg Turkington, otherwise known as Neil Hamburger, but that backstory has no relevance to the film's narrative as he's otherwise unnamed. It's performance art, but also satirical as it's not far from the truth of what some comedians actually resort to in their acts. In that sense, it's a study on what's considered entertainment, why people are drawn to it and what it means to people.
The film chronicles a cycle of repetitive sequences that grow darker in despair. The comedian attends novelty tours on his journey, browsing at eye-sore mechanical marvels in the middle of the desert, often away from the main group and guide. Then he performs at third-rate gigs such as dingy bars, often saying how he's travelled from miles away but never where from exactly, and gets upset when the audience don't laugh at his jokes. That's all part of his act, however, but it doesn't get them more comfortable. His warm-up act is an amateur mime artist played by Tye Sheridan, though how they're travelling together remains a mystery. He calls his estranged daughter before bed in hopes that she'll pick up and reconnect, but it's ostensibly in vain. Some other characters take him aside, such as detours from his wealthy cousin played by John C. Reilly, an example of success, and Michael Cera in a four minute cameo as a hustler who wants company.
It feels like the films of Roy Andersson by way of David Lynch as a surrealistic nightmare. From constant stumbles, the comedian is on a broken American dream, both as a father and as a budding entrepreneur with his comedy act – which it must be noted, is far from his stoic self. He seems willingly isolated offstage, but abrasive when he's onstage. If comedy is an escape for some, is that necessarily a good thing? It can be cryptic in these scenes that don't tie in together, but they're all expressing his anxieties and failure in his career and fatherhood. Almost every gig he does is greeted by an apathetic 'good show' from the manager while he looks dead inside. The tragedy is off-screen and internal but it's palpable, highlighted by the washed-out and carefully composed photography. Entertainment is a very unsettling film, and at one point near its middle I found myself tested by it, but it's thoroughly profound for those who want something challenging and hauntingly beautiful.
The film chronicles a cycle of repetitive sequences that grow darker in despair. The comedian attends novelty tours on his journey, browsing at eye-sore mechanical marvels in the middle of the desert, often away from the main group and guide. Then he performs at third-rate gigs such as dingy bars, often saying how he's travelled from miles away but never where from exactly, and gets upset when the audience don't laugh at his jokes. That's all part of his act, however, but it doesn't get them more comfortable. His warm-up act is an amateur mime artist played by Tye Sheridan, though how they're travelling together remains a mystery. He calls his estranged daughter before bed in hopes that she'll pick up and reconnect, but it's ostensibly in vain. Some other characters take him aside, such as detours from his wealthy cousin played by John C. Reilly, an example of success, and Michael Cera in a four minute cameo as a hustler who wants company.
It feels like the films of Roy Andersson by way of David Lynch as a surrealistic nightmare. From constant stumbles, the comedian is on a broken American dream, both as a father and as a budding entrepreneur with his comedy act – which it must be noted, is far from his stoic self. He seems willingly isolated offstage, but abrasive when he's onstage. If comedy is an escape for some, is that necessarily a good thing? It can be cryptic in these scenes that don't tie in together, but they're all expressing his anxieties and failure in his career and fatherhood. Almost every gig he does is greeted by an apathetic 'good show' from the manager while he looks dead inside. The tragedy is off-screen and internal but it's palpable, highlighted by the washed-out and carefully composed photography. Entertainment is a very unsettling film, and at one point near its middle I found myself tested by it, but it's thoroughly profound for those who want something challenging and hauntingly beautiful.
I was amazed about the fact, that Peter Jackson said NO to too much CGI, that he used real sets, models, amazingly detailed costumes and beautiful cinematography.
ALL of that went down the drain with this one... this boring, crappy looking CGI-disaster, this Mexican Standoff in Middle Earth.
What was the "story" again? Some greedy dwarf does not want to come out of his cave - and suddenly all kinds of armies show up... to fight each other in a ridiculous way...
The last 10 minutes then felt like some different move... somehow like the original Trilogy... BECAUSE THERE WERE REAL LANDSCAPES.
It felt like something really beautuful standing next to something really ugly. But this short moment of "how to make a nice, decent, GOOD movie" did not save and also not redeem this perversion of cinematic history! This could as well be titled: WORLD OF WARCRAFT - THE MOVIE.
Other titles: Legolas, Dwarfes, CGI-ORCS and other stupid stuff in: TO HELL WITH GRAVITY! Watching THE FELLOSHIP OF THE RING makes you believe in the good things in this world: Friendsip, beauty, decency, good filmmaking... everything that is right and just and good. Everything a guy like Aragorn would put into an epic speech before a battle that mattered.
The battlescenes of the CGI-Creatures did not matter. And having too many trolls with too many artificial limbs - or an Orcs with a Klingon Bathleth-Prosthesis (and I usually like STAR TREK references... maybe just not in a Middle Earth Movie) I am not just disappinted. I am shocked by this mess. How can the SAME director that made the BEST TRILOGY EVER do this? Well, the same question has been asked countless times about George Lucas.
Good Job, Peter - you killed filmmaking. I am also not sure if you are honest about promoting this disgusting gimmick called 3D or you just have to do it because the industry wants you to do so! Damn it - this is the time of bad movies gone too far, the age of darkness... J.R.R. Tolkien could write some words of truth about this - but he's dead (lucky him... so he does not have to bear what they did to his beautiful vision!) This is the age of darkness indeed. The age of greed! I tend to believe that it is not completely Peter Jackson's fault - it is the perverted, greedy film-industry. They do not think in art or beauty or decency - they think and care only about profit! They exploit everything.
The sad part is the people defending all that because the wrongly connect it to something that is good and beautiful. But the connection is wrong! Just because it has partly the same actors, the same director and is supposed to play in the same universe as the good trilogy does not make it the same.
George Lucas tried (and failed) in doing the same. Overkilling something with CGI and bad writing is not filmmaking - it's a shame! Personally, I do the same here that I do with this terrible STAR WARS PREQUEL TRILOGY: I never watch it again. I imagine the events of Bilbo's adventure with the dwarfes from the visual and artistic perspective of Ian Holm in THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RINGS - there could still be something great being made - but please by another director.
Somebody young and hungry and talented. Some person like the Peter Jackson of the 1990s. Somebody who LOVES the source-material and has a vision of it - but not a financial one! What also works - and it's totally for free: Imagination. Having a good actor talking about something rather than showing it invokes a million times more beautiful images than cramming it down your throat with a CGI funnel! Anyway - whatever. This needed to be said! And somebody like RED LETTER MEDIA should really make a review similar to the STAR WARS PREQUEL reviews! May the Force be with you - GandalfThe Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) movie download