Hot Rod

Saturday Night Live's party boys team up to deliver a charming gem out of leftfield. This film has all the hallmarks of a conventionally dire comedy, but its quirks and erraticism rescue and elevate it beyond the mundane.

Rod (Samberg) is a down-and-out stay-at-home chap desperate to be a stuntman. Ably assisted by his crew (Taccone, Hader & McBride) he performs insipid stunts. Usually he messes them up. And he fights, literally fights, to earn his stepfather's respect. But in a neat, if predictable plot twist, Rod has to take his stunt work to the next level to save the man he so abhors.

The performances are just shy of absurd, but silly enough to keep the laughs coming. Rico taking on a redneck made me guffaw, while Kevin's dancing and mild manners were similarly enjoyable. Meanwhile, the linear and uncreative thread is spiced up with a host of interjections and wrong turns. Sketch comedy's influence is in evidence throughout. But that adds to the film, rather than detracting from it. I was reminded, remarkably, of Napoleon Dynamite and Little Miss Sunshine, two films that contain fairly standard plots and directions, but are riddled with comic episodes and wrong turns.

There's a rock soundtrack too, that's again just short of all out parody, and plenty of quotable, if idiotic lines. When Rod has to take himself to his "happy place" and the next scene we are provided with is him punchdancing his way to happiness, I had to stop the DVD and rewatch. It's delightfully stupid. I wanted to own this film, for repeat views. That's a great way to feel when watching a movie.

~~~

2007

Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, Bill Hader, Danny McBridge, Isla Fisher

dir. Akiva Schaffer

Noble Beast - Andrew Bird

There's something mesmeric about Andrew Bird's 2009 offering, Noble Beast. Trained as a classical violinist, and self-confessed pro-whistler, Bird began to record more popular and mainstream records as a means to capture the diverse sounds he was capable of producing.

Noble Beast offers a subtle combination of folk, indie and easy-listening. But subtle needs to be, if anything, overstated here. There's a gentleness behind Bird's skilled guitar- and violin-playing that draws in the listener and conjures up visions of plains and woods, of nature and science. Over the top rests his silky soft vocals. The comparison with Sufjan Stevens is apt. They even look similar (Stevens vs Bird... ish), but it's the careful layering of their music that really provoked the similarity.

There's also a diverse range of subject material in Bird's lyrics. There's a poeticism behind 'Tenuousness' and 'Anonanimal', coupled with verbal play; the symmetry behind album opener 'Oh No' and closer 'On Ho' requires more study, but there's a careful planning behind his work that deserves attention. My favourites perhaps remain 'Souverian' and 'The Privateers', the latter for its accessibility, urgency and sparkling chorus, the former for its dreaminess. But the stand-out lyric is almost certainly:

Fake conversations on a non-existent telephone

Like the words of a man who's spent too much

Time alone

There is, certainly, my own penchant for an exploration of loneliness at play here. But that observation of the inability of one alone to articulate effectively is brought about in such a fluid and melodious way in 'Effigy' that the contrast couldn't be starker. Beautiful and thrilling to the ear.

~~~

2009