Hollywood ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, 3.5 readers.
BQB here with a review of Hulu’s latest comedy.
You might know Charlie Day as the loveable janitor on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Here, he breaks out in a movie of his very own, and becomes a veritable Charlie Chaplin, bringing a modern take to vaudeville schtick.
Day plays a helpless, homeless, mute mental patient, dumped into the middle of LA by an overburdened mental facility that doesn’t have the funding to take care of him anymore. He’s instantly snatched up by movie producer Ray Liotta (one of his last roles and it’s so sad to see him so full of life only to realize, well, that he no longer is). Liotta’s Western film is struggling due to a troublesome actor who bears a striking resemblance to Day’s mental patient, but who simply won’t cooperate.
Said mental patient is accidentally named Latte Pronto, due to a mixup with a coffee order, and through a series of comedic misunderstandings, he goes down the rabbit hole of super stardom, never saying a word, never doing anything of any importance really, just lucking out as he happens to be in the right place at the right time each step of the way, getting ushered from one opportunity to the next from a cavalcade of all-star cameos, from his energy drink addicted down and out publicist Ken Jeong, to his fast talking agent Edie Falco (perhaps her best role since the Sopranos), to his whirlwind tabloid marriage to a famous actress (Kate Beckinsale) to a foray into politics aided by John Malkovich.
Aided by the various cast members of the Always Sunny gang, Latte achieves great fame and glory with all its ups and downs, but like iron pyrite, discovers that Tinseltown is only a paradise for fools.
As a comedy fan, I enjoyed this flick because it had plenty of classic jokes that were just there for the sake of comedy. No lessons or story behind them, nothing of real value, just there for a setup and a punchline. The downside is that while I appreciated all the gags, none of them were real gutbusters. I never really openly guffawed, just a mild smirk here and there. Day’s overall premise is that fame boils down to being in the right place at the right time and any fool can do it, even a bumbling idiot mental patient with nothing to say…so I don’t know if that means if all of us nobodies should be happy that we avoided such a silly business or mad that we didn’t get our piece of the action if getting it is so easy? (The title of the film would suggest the former, though I assume Day is happy with his lot in life.)
STATUS: Shelf-worthy.
Bookshelf Battle 