American Animal

2011 artsy comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A dying man throws a hissy fit when his roommates gets a job.

Hard to do a plot synopsis with this one since it was pretty much sans plot. This is an interesting little movie actually, but I'm not sure there's a high percentage of people who would make it all the way through it. Matt D'Elia wrote, directed, and starred in it, and I'm having a tough time figuring out if this is bordering on awesome tour de force insanity or if he's just a poor-man's Russell Brand or if he's somewhere in between. Whatever, he's comically unhinged, and the whole movie feels like random acts of insanity shoved into a tiny drawer. There are repetitious snippets that go on too long, the repetition of a word that goes on exactly one second longer than it should but seems like a month longer or what seems like endless giggling. It pushes boundaries, a movie that almost invades your space. And D'Elia's character says things like "You think I'm being a dick? Sabadoo dabbadoo" which I know I spelled correctly because I watched this with subtitles. But then he says, "Why on the name of this earth would I not put on the ritz when I can put on the ritz. If I were to not put on the ritz when I'm perfectly capable of putting on the ritz, wouldn't that make me fucking crazy?" And it makes you wonder if you're watching something that is maybe a little bit of genius. There's also a great poem. Of course, there's also a monologue at around the hour mark when the guy, after a small transformation, tries to rationalize his behavior and almost ruins the thing. The friend's acting doesn't work well for me. Loads of movie references make this kind of fun, but I can't believe how many monologues this has. It might break a monologue record. This if flawed and a little annoying, perhaps intentionally, but it's an interesting little experiment.

My theory: There's a Tyler Durden thing going on here.

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