Lemon

2017 comedy

Rating: 11/20

Plot: When a struggling actor's blind girlfriend decides to leave him, he tries to find a way to put his life back together.

This is more of an anti-comedy like what you'd expect from Quentin Dupieux, the sort of comedy that isn't written to make you laugh as much as it's written to make you really uncomfortable. This deals with sexuality, bodily functions, and race in ways that wouldn't be a problem at all if there was a point to it all, but I'm not totally sure there's a point to it all.

This was directed by Janicza Bravo and co-written by Bravo and the lead actor (and her husband) Brett Gelman. It might be sneakily self-referential as the latter half of the movie does deal with a relationship between a white guy and a black woman, and it really does seem to want to say something. I'm just not sure what that is. The narrative is jumpy, and although no director really has to explain the narrative structure of a movie, something that would be like explaining why a joke is funny, I really wanted somebody to explain why this story was told the way it was. I started wondering if a lot of these scenes could have been deleted from this already short movie without any loss, and then I decided that almost all of them could have.

It's not a complete waste of time. There are some humorous moments. Gelman's purposely flat performance is pretty good though his character is about as unlikable as a character can be. There's an awkward family musical moment when they sing exuberantly about matzo balls. The movie opens with the main character peeing himself and ends (well, near the end) with him nearly crapping his pants.

By the end, I was left looking for things that I liked about this movie in order for it not to be a complete waste of my time. And there was just one thing--Michael Cera's hair.

Michael Cera's hair is a force!