“Stop reading so much into it!” says an imaginary interlocutor. Shut up.

First, there’s the elephant in the room. The movie buckles under a raging homoeroticism typical of so much of the greased-up macho entertainment this country’s middle schoolers had been maintaining as a viable industry those endless and stupefying Bush years. Not that I’m judging; even mid-American heshers need a socially acceptable outlet for sorting out their feelings.

There’s something else here, though. You have people hurting themselves for money, certainly. Their own choice, you might counter.

But then you have them getting other people involved–people who don’t have the drug whore level of internal desolation necessary to consider self-debasement a profession. The corner fortune teller and security guy humiliated by Pontious’s all-but-tea-bagging. The destruction of a miniature golf course, a rental car, crappy outlet shelves in downtown LA.

A fretful shopkeeper watches a disguised Knoxville brazenly attempt to steal item after shabby item from his coldly lit shelves. He intervenes for the sake of his livelihood, not knowing whether the “old man” is a harmless klepto, a distraction for another group of thieves, or an armed nut. Heart pounding, adrenaline pumping, ever closer to that fatal coronary.

Superficially, you have a group of amiable hooligans, like you’d find in any town on the planet; burning their youthful anti-social energy smashing telephone kiosks. Except, most don’t consider it a profession, and more importantly, most aren’t funded by a multinational corporation. Ostensibly, it’s the young taking the piss out of the old; or poor punk versus frightened middle class stiff. But follow the money, think of who benefits. Imagine your grandfather investing his life savings into opening a convenience store. He carefully stocks the shelves, spends money he doesn’t have on fixing the security system, and spends night after sleepless night wearily eyeballing the low-lifes suspiciously meandering through the aisles. One day a gang of cackling Viacom executives pour through the doors–too many to manage. And they all proceed in unison to drop trow and rattle off a deuce on the cold linoleum. Then imagine they all got paid by advertisers for it. Just another case of the rich having a go at the poor.

That is what this movie is. Fuck this movie.

Last Modified : April 22nd, 2009 Filed under : Movies Navigate : Previous post / Next post