Safety Not Guaranteed
I never liked Andy Kaufman in Taxi. The cute foreign character is offensive. Reminds me of the manipulation of the African American image. All these one-dimensional Indian characters and Arab characters. Socially inept. Sexually dysfunctional. In desperate need of Western intervention.
Safety Not Guaranteed has it's moments, but I can't get past the characterization of the Indian kid. The actor, whoever he is, shamelessly selling out his ancestry for a role. Nothing positive can be derived, culturally, from his depiction of an Indian youth.
Abed in Community, on the other hand, is a wonderfully conceived character. He uses Western media to bridging the cultural gap, between his father's ethnicity and the United States. He is a product of television. Raised by film. Socially inept, yes. Sexually dysfunctional, sure. But there's a commentary underlying it all. Abed is a character, and an important one at that. He is not merely a clown.
Kenneth, too, is a clown. The primary narrative arc is predictable and patronizing. We are forced to laugh at Kenneth. He is socially inept. Sexually dysfunctional. He has a bad haircut. He is a hardcore Star Wars fan. He wears denim. All these cheap shots. Until, predictably, the tables turn. Suddenly, inexplicable in the context of the narrative, yet utterly predictable, Kenneth transforms. He becomes a musician. Sensitive. Brilliant. Misunderstood. The characters in the film, after mocking him and making a series of justified assumptions based on the available evidence, realize the error of their ways.
That is the moral of the story: don't judge a book by it's cover. Oh, how we disregard the weirdos!
Aubrey Plaza is adorable enough to get me through the movie. Past cringe-worthy montages and cheap jokes made at the expense of it's one-dimensional characters. Safety is a demonstration of how not to be a judgmental asshole. Don't be a judgmental asshole, it says. Take it from me.
Indie bullshit. A film for idiots who think they're smart, and smart people who are really idiots. Like a lot of indie flicks, Safety disguises it's simplicity as complex. Here, Indie means low budget. And nothing more.
2 stars.
Grizzly Man
Werner Herzog's narration is about as pretentious as it gets. Jurgen Haabermaaster, from the Mighty Boosh, comes to mind. The footage of bears is poorly shot. But it's not a documentary about bears. It's a documentary about a repressed homosexual who, in an attempt to run away from himself, re-associates himself with another species. Timothy Treadwell has serious psychological problems. The film exposes him, selectively editing together out-takes from his archives of unpublished footage. Watching it is like reading a dead mental patient's diary. Herzog deserves no credit for producing the film. He is simply exploiting the dead. Taking credit for someone else's story. Taking advantage of an opportunity to advance himself at the expense of his subject. Treadwell deserves no credit, either. He is not a good documentary maker, nor is he a good host. He's unlikable, idiotic, and deranged.
It's an incredible documentary.
3.5 stars.
