Entry by: 5 WORD MOVIE REVIEWS
Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie
Stay away from this garbage.
Tim and Eric are given a billion dollars by the Schlaaang Corporation to make a movie. When that movie turns out to be three minutes long and awful, Tommy Schlaaang demands his money back. Conveniently, Tim and Eric spot a commercial by a man offering a billion dollars to anyone who will come and take over his almost derelict mall. Seeing this as their only option to avoid being killed by Schlaaang, they make a run for it. Hilarity does not ensue.
Is it me? Am I the problem? Is there something missing in my sense of humour? These are the questions I was asking myself as I endured the seemingly endless (but in fact only 93 minute) running time of this abomination. Watching a film like this makes me weep for the future of the human race.
Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim got their start creating the TV series Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! for Cartoon Network in the US. It was a sketch comedy show with each episode being about eleven minutes. I debated whether to watch any of it in advance of going to see this film, but I decided to go in fresh. Now I’m thinking that if I had watched one or two episodes I might have been spared having to suffer through this. I could have sat in the bathroom pulling out my own toenails with pliers, for example, as that would at least have been more entertaining. Sketch comedy works because it’s quick. You get in, you make the gag, you get the hell out again. It rarely works when expanded to feature length and this is the perfect example of why.
WANTED! For crimes against all the laws of God and man.
Tim and Eric have managed to garner quite a fanbase among the comedy elite in the States; people like Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, John C. Reilly and Will Forte have dropped up as guest stars on their series and do the same here, amongst others like Jeff Goldblum, William Atherton, Ray Wise and the great Robert Loggia. These last names in particular lend the production an air of class that it really does not deserve.
I have seen Tim and Eric’s style described as avant-garde – which I suppose it is, technically – and even anti-humour. Anti-humour (I had to look it up) is when the laugh comes from the irony associated with a deliberately unfunny punchline that is at odds with what you would expect. I like to think I have a fairly well-developed sense of irony, and to my mind, Tim and Eric have got stuck at the “deliberately unfunny” part of the equation. Maybe it’s all just a prank. Some kind of mass social experiment on mob mentality. The world’s biggest bandwagon, perhaps. Or maybe it’s just shit. Let me put it this way: if I had paid to watch this, I would be demanding my money back from Heidecker and Wareheim in person, and at gunpoint.
