Donald Cried

Donald gets in Peter’s face.

(2016) Dramedy (Electric Chinoland) Kristopher Avedesian, Jesse Wakeman, Louisa Krause, Ted Arcidi, Kate Fitzgerald, Shawn Contois, Donny Fite, Patrick Languzzi, Jeremy Furtado, Robby Morse Levy, Peter Lewis Walsh, Tyrone Alcorn, Alexander Cook, Tom Kilgallen, Kyle Espeleta, Nick Reiss, Matthew Barletta, Allie Marshall, Ariana DeFusco. Directed by Kris Avedesian

We’ve all had that friend; the one who isn’t really a bad person but they just try too hard and end up causing all sorts of awkward moments. We roll our eyes at their approach and often these are the ones who have a really hard time growing up past a certain time in their lives.

Peter Latang (Wakeman) has returned to the Rhode Island town he grew up in and left 20 years ago to settle the affairs of his grandmother, who raised him after his parents died. Peter isn’t all that eager to be there, and true to form things start going wrong right away when he loses his wallet on the bus he took from Manhattan (where he works in the financial industry) to Rhode Island. The realtor who is putting grandma’s house on the market is comely Kristin (Krause) who seems to remember Peter fondly although he doesn’t have a clue who she is.

Without transportation and without cash, Peter is forced to suck up his pride and walk across the street to see his best friend in high school, Donald Treebeck (Avedesian). Donald is a bearded man-child who worshiped the ground Peter walked on back in the day and is absolutely thrilled that the two are reunited. Peter is clearly uncomfortable but he’s in a bind and Donald is essentially his only way out, so he reluctantly agrees to spend time with his old friend.

Thus begins a journey to old haunts, old friends and old flames as Donald, who clearly has absolutely no filter, puts Peter in one uncomfortable predicament after another. It soon becomes evident that Donald has endured bullying, distance and rejection far beyond perhaps what he deserves. Sure he’s stuck doing the same old things that he did in high school; listening to heavy metal, smoking pot, getting into mischief but when push comes to shove he’s there.

Soon it becomes evident that Donald isn’t the misfit we mistook him for at first, nor is Peter the stable, successful guy he makes himself out to be. The bonds of friendship were always tenuous on one side of this equation, but there is no doubt that both men are going to need to rise above their own limitations if they are to grow as people and the one more capable of it just might surprise you.

As I watched this at the press preview, I have to admit that at first I wasn’t terribly impressed. The movie seemed to be rife with indie cliches, The situations were so awkward as to be annoying to watch; it seemed like I as doomed to be spending an hour and a half with one of those annoying guys who I went out of my way to avoid spending time with.

Then a funny thing started happening. I started getting into it. And the more I found out about Donald and Peter, the more interested I became. I found suddenly that rather than Peter being the guy I wanted to spend time with, it was Donald. Sure, he’s a bit of a screw-up and a stoner and prone to inopportune behavior, but there was so much more to him than met the eye. He’d been given a role to play; not one he particularly wanted, but it was his and he contented himself with playing it as best he could. Most of us don’t have that sense of grace.

Peter on the other hand, becomes less of a stand-up guy the longer the movie goes on. You begin to understand that he’s a self-centered jerk and always has been. The more you watch him, the more you think back to the early part of the movie and realize that you really hadn’t noticed what a dick he was being. That’s masterful acting but it’s also masterful writing and direction.

In fact, I find that even after the movie was finished, I was getting more into it and the more I thought about it, the more I like it which likely means by Independence day I’ll likely have this in my top ten of the year. Or maybe it will plateau right around where it is now. Still, this is a fascinating study in human relationships and how we interpret them. They’re not always the way they seem to be on the surface. In fact, they rarely are.

REASONS TO GO: A lovely bittersweet vibe. Grows on you more after you’ve seen it.
REASONS TO STAY: A couple of indie cliches here and there. Takes awhile to get its footing.
FAMILY VALUES: Among other things, nudity, profanity, some drug use and sensuality.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Was originally made as a short and was then expanded into a feature.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 4/12/16: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet. Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Gabriel
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: The Jazz Loft According to W. Eugene Smith

The Fluffy Movie

Gabriel Iglesias works the crowd.

(2014) Stand-Up Comedy Concert (Open Road) Gabriel Iglesias, Jacqueline Obradors, Gina Brillon, Armando C. Cosio, Jeremy Ray Valdez, Ron White, Tommy Chong, Alfred Robles, Rick Gutierrez, Piolin, Ray Williams Johnson, Juliocesar Chavez, Martin Moreno, Chuy Lopez. Directed by Manny Rodriguez and Jay Lavender

Some may not be aware that Gabriel Iglesias is one of the most popular comedians on the planet. Having taken a run on Last Comic Standing that was promising but was cut short due to a rules violation (he phoned home despite a ban on communication with family which got him disqualified), he has parlayed that disappointment into mega-popularity. He has sold out hundreds of shows around the world and his Unity Through Laughter tour took the portly comic to dozens of countries in an effort to embrace the philosophy that no matter how different our cultures we all have laughter in common.

Stand-Up concert films tend to be less cinematic than music concert films. A big budget production can fill a big screen but when it comes to stand-up, the focus is entirely on one guy telling jokes. While the small screen is adequate for that, sometimes on the big multiplex screen it can seem a bit lost.

Still, Iglesias is warm and funny and you get a sense of his commitment to his family (including a stepson he raised, something which I can relate to), his pride in his culture (comparing it to the culture of India) and his loyalty to his friends (discussed in a story of a drunken night with his friend Martin in a gay bar). You can’t help but like the guy.

Much of the comedy has to do with his teenage son Frankie who is at that phase in his life where he communicates in monosyllables and the most important thing in life is playing videogames. Iglesias describes his frustrations in communicating with his son and his inability to get him to take out the trash (sound familiar to anyone out there?) which leads Iglesias to the realization that he’d spoiled his son.

Like with most stand-ups, Iglesias is at his best when he gets personal with his own life. He talks about his battle with his weight – he had ballooned up to 455 pounds which is, as he put it, “just shy of a Discovery Channel show” – and has lost a significant amount of weight. What prompted him to lose the weight was his doctor’s diagnosis of Type II Diabetes and the doctor’s prognosis that if he didn’t do something about it immediately, he’d be dead in two years. That’s the kind of thing that motivates people. Not a candidate for gastric bypass surgery due to his lifestyle on the road, Iglesias did it by essentially eliminating carbs. He still eats tons of cholesterol but as he puts it, “that’ll only kill me in ten years. I figure I’ve gained eight years.” Barrio math.

Recorded at the Shark Tank in San Jose (previously known as San Jose Arena, HP Pavilion and currently as SAP Center) – an arena I’m intimately familiar with having attended several concerts and hockey games there – he turns an arena that seats close to 20,000 people into an intimate club setting. While he can’t interact with his audience the same way he might in a comedy club, he certainly relates to them.

The crowning glory of the movie takes place over the last twenty minutes or so and it is why I’ve rated this movie as highly as I have. The movie opens with a skit that depicts the meeting between his mom (Obradors) and his mariachi-playing dad (Valdez) in a Tijuana club. The result was little Gabriel who in the second act of the opening skit is inspired by a nefariously rented videotape of Eddie Murphy Raw. The two events become central to the film’s denouement. It is also no accident that Raw also begins of a skit enacting events from Murphy’s childhood.

Gabriel describes how his father, who had abandoned the child he’d created and the woman he’d created him with, got in contact with him after 30 years. Iglesias was reluctant to get together at first; there’s a lot of anger that comes in being abandoned by a parent as you might imagine. Some of that anger gets expressed here, some of it through humor. Iglesias finally agrees to meet his absent father which leads to some surprising discoveries.

Not long after, Frankie’s natural father contacts Iglesias and announces that he wants to get involved in Frankie’s life. That can be devastating to a stepdad who worries how the dynamic might affect his relationship with his son, and whether bringing someone into their lives who may well have been better off out of their lives might create tension. How this works out is a tribute to stepparents everywhere (as Iglesias gratefully acknowledges in the end credits).

Standup concert films aren’t for everyone, but this is one of the best I’ve seen. The end of the movie had some tears falling as well as the laughter and I don’t think you have to be a stepparent to feel the emotion that Iglesias brings out with his storytelling. Not everyone will relate but there is enough common ground here that all of us can find something to laugh about.

The Spanish word mija is one I wish we had in the English language. It is a word, spoken sometimes with exasperation but always with affection in regards to your children. “What do you want, mija?” or “Don’t cry, mija.” There’s nothing analogous to it in English; we tend to use existing words like son or sweetie or baby with our kids but we don’t have a specific word that carries with it such love and affection. Hearing a parent refer to you as mija is like being wrapped in a warm blanket of love and that reference continues well into your own adulthood. We are all children of somebody and our relationship with our parents informs our relationship with our kids, those of us that have them. When a movie comes along that reminds you of how amazing that relationship is, it’s a movie worth seeking out. That it comes from a stand-up comedy routine is even more amazing.

 

REASONS TO GO: Very funny stand-up work. The last 20 minutes are absolutely devastating.

REASONS TO STAY: Some may find the personal material jarring after the more traditional comedy.

FAMILY VALUES:  A smattering of mildly foul language and some sexual references.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The stand-up content was aggregated from two shows filmed on February 28, 2014 and March 1, 2014.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/29/14: Rotten Tomatoes: 50% positive reviews. Metacritic: 62/100.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Eddie Murphy: Raw

FINAL RATING: 8/10

NEXT: 13