Directed by: Rick Alverson
Starring: Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim, James Murphy
Waiting for his father to die so he can receive his fortune, a privileged Brooklyn man drifts through life, getting his kicks from playing immature pranks on strangers.
Living on a houseboat, Heidecker is the privileged son of a wealthy father, now on his death bed. Due to this, he has neither the need nor the incentive to work for a living. To fill time, he spends his days and nights hanging out with his immature friends, often making others feel uncomfortable in social situations by behaving like imbeciles. Fueled by a disdain for the lower classes, Heidecker pushes people to their limits of tolerance, all for his puerile entertainment. Though he doesn't need the money, he takes a job as a dish-washer, seemingly for the purpose of mocking his fellow workers.
Undoubtedly the worst thing to happen to American popular culture over the last decade is the "man-child" phenomenon. It began with the reprehensible TV show 'Jackass' and quickly bled into cinema with the likes of Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler making a more than comfortable living off audiences inexplicable interest in obnoxious behavior. Why anyone would enjoy watching middle-aged privileged white guys behaving like morons is beyond me but a large section of the public eats this stuff up. 'The Comedy' details just how abhorrent this mentality really is by focusing on a character who seems to have stepped out of a Sandler movie and onto the streets of New York. You won't have seen many characters as despicable as Heidecker but, equally, you won't be able to take your eyes off him, a walking car crash of a man.
We've all had the misfortune of encountering characters like this: the loudest guy at the party; the guy who sits beside you on the bus, insisting on talking to you just to mess with your day; that asshole holding up the line at the grocery store by arguing over some trivial matter with the cashier. They're usually middle-class white males whose only way to feel important is to use their untouchable privileged positions to ruin someone else's day. Here, Heidecker pulls horrid stunts like offering a taxi driver a sum of money too large to resist, all so he can drive the cab while drunk. Within a few seconds, the driver realizes he's made a huge mistake by allowing himself to be taken advantage of. It's a scene you could imagine might have audiences laughing their asses off if it appeared in a sequel to 'The Hangover', but here it plays as an uncomfortable scene of guerilla class warfare.
'The Comedy' plays like a riff on 'Falling Down' but, rather than baseball bats and bazookas, self-entitlement and solipsism are the weapons of choice for its loathsome protagonist.
7/10
The Movie Waffler