Wrong

2012 comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A loser loses his dog and tries to find it.

More non-sequitur comedy from the mind of Quentin Dupieux who brought us the wacky horror film Rubber about a murderous tire. That movie was fascinating but imperfect. This movie's the same way. Throw it in that pile of other movies that just aren't for everybody because Dupieux makes a very special kind of movie, nearly idiosyncratic but always built on a foundation of the history of wacko comedy reminiscent of everything from the Theater of the Absurd playwrights to old-style Marx Brothers or Abbott and Costello stuff. It doesn't always make sense. Or maybe it never really makes sense, but that's not the point. The point is that it's unusual enough, at times almost painfully trying-to-hard unusual, to bring out the chuckles. Dupieux makes movies as ridiculous as I would make if I could make movies, and I'm not sure if that's criticism or compliment or a little bit of both. Oddball gags that are almost as annoying as Salvador Dali walking a pet armadillo around New York City are aplenty: the perpetual rain at an office the main character continues to work in regardless of being fired, a landscaper who sketches a childish picture of a lawnmower, a palm tree transforming into a pine tree, a guy who paints vehicles without permission ("Sir, I took it upon myself to paint your vehicle blue."), a clock that hits :60 after the fifty-ninth minute, characters not recognizing each other, dead characters returning with no mention about how that is kind of unusual, a neighbor who refuses to admit that he jogs, the memory and subconsciousness of fecal matter. It's juvenile avant-garde, and if there's any meaning at all to any of it, it's certainly over my head. But it made me smile nevertheless. I liked the main character Dolph and the guy who played him (Jack Plotnick, who I falsely recognized as somebody I recognized), and I liked the very-cute Alexis Dziena who, turns out, is that naked girl from Broken Flowers. William Fichtner, a guy I usually like, is also in this, but unfortunately, he's playing somebody who I'm pretty sure is supposed to be Asian. And the accent is no good although I suppose that could be part of the comedy. I wouldn't put it past this Dupieux fellow!