So a few years ago we find out that Joaquin Phoenix, the guy I best know from Gladiator and Signs, who was also in Walk the Line, which I should probably see, was retiring from acting, which actors tend to do, and was instead working on a hip hop career, which sounded legit, or at least not as crazy to me as it did to others. Then he was chewing gum on the Letterman show, and generally being a spaz that would get mentioned here and there, and out of nowhere I find out that a documentary made about him having a meltdown was coming out on Dvd and that everyone kind of thought it was a hoax before a week later when, yeah surprise, the joke was on all of us because it WAS A HOAX! Whoa!
Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid
Now, I have all this back story I've pieced together about the movie and I think, hey lets actually watch it, because I was kind of excited. And I shouldn't have been, because the movie itself is like 10 hours of nothing happening. If you know that it's about Joaquin Phoenix being crazy, then there no reason to see it. In fact if you read the previous paragraph about him retiring to get into hip hop before getting press for being a burnout, then there's no reason to see this movie, because the only thing worth knowing about the movie is that Joaquin Phoenix is crazy in it. Which is probably why no one saw it, or can even sit through more than 15 minutes of it. Because when you already know that it's a fake documentary about Joaquin Phoenix pretending to be an asshole, you wonder why he's being such an asshole by showing it all to you.
I mean, I'm not sure what understanding they are expecting us to have. The concept of the movie, which I think can still be considered a concept, is more or less the kind of shit you think up while smoking pot with your buddies, which is obvious the best idea you've ever had, that later turns into an inside joke when you think about it later.
"Pothead Ideas" ---- or when we thought it would be an awesome idea to pretend to have a meltdown, and completely destroy everything Joaquin Phoenix has accomplished as an actor to see if people will believe us. Dude, I dare you to go through with it!
Klaatu barada nikto
And then they fucking did. For like, 2 years they tried to troll us. Just like the shit that happens on the internet all the time where someone acts extra retarded and tries to tell us we're the assholes for falling for it. Expect it doesn't work very well when everyone already assumes it a hoax. And that's kind of why I'm confused about how to fell, because to be honest, I feel kind of guilty.
Joaquin went through all this time and trouble fucking up his life, burning every bridge he has built, fucking over the people like his publicist and friends, to try and fool me into believing he is a self destructive, drug abusing, celebrity loser, and I wasn't even paying attention. I feel kind of bad. He did it for 2 years, while he could have been making other movies, and he got his brother in law to almost go bankrupt over it, and in the end, the only people who even seemed to notice, thought it was odd that he had gone crazy over night and figured it was a trick, and were right.
Ok, I'm done now...
And its not really all that unique either. It feels like Casey Aflek and Joaquin Phoenix were amazed by the movie Borat, and thought it would be cool to try and freak out the squares too. Only instead of creating a character, Joaquin would just be himself as a drugged out dork. So that's what I'm going to measure the movie by. I'm going to compare it to the stuff Sasha Baron Cohen has been doing for years, the stuff Andy Kaufman did for his entire career, and even some of the other simular stuff you see people like Die Antwoord do, and then it becomes kind of obvious that this movie is pretty shitty because they didn't even do it right. You're not supposed to commit this much, and when it seems like everyone in the movie is in on the joke, then its the audience you're trying to fuck with. Except that no one fucking cares, because Signs wasn't even that good. Why would aliens leave signs BEFORE they attacked us, that doesn't even make sense.
11.1 out of 30
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