Review of A Fantastic Fear of Everything (2012) by Jesse O — 29 Apr 2014

Maybe I'm more of a fan of Simon Pegg than I thought, because I thought this film was actually pretty good despite both the negative critical, and audience, reaction. Simon Pegg pretty much makes this movie, at least for me.

I can certainly see how the film was negatively viewed, I do think the film does try many too many things, like you're watching 17 separate movies in one, and a lot of it does feel forced because of that.

I do agree that the film could've been a little more tightening in the story department, you could've gotten rid of a lot of unnecessary elements and I think this would've vastly improved the final cut of the film.

But I can't also blame the director(s), if you look on this here site, because the film is certainly ambitious enough that I think the film deserves a watch, even if all its ideas are cluttered and not expounded on in a proper way that makes sense.

Flawed ambition is preferable to me. Even with that, I do think that Pegg's presence probably elevates a script that's all over the place and makes it, at the very least, entertaining to watch.

The film very much feels, in the way it's shot and acted, like a dark fairy tale and that was the intention, I'm assuming. The film's visuals are solid and, again, give it that fairy tale look.

There are some weird racist moments in the film that felt incredibly out of place with this story. I did like the main character's arc of finally overcoming and finally overcoming all his neuroses that were set in place when he was abandoned as a child by his mother.

So I thought, at the very least, that part of the film was very good and Simon Pegg does a great job at portraying this paranoid man who thinks somebody is out to get him and how he, in his own mind, tries to connect a seemingly innocuous meeting with a Hollywood mogul that wants to buy his script to him being the relative of a Victorian-era serial killer.

It's a shame the film couldn't find a consistent tone amid all the insanity it's offering, but thanks to Simon Pegg, the end result is an entertaining, but very flawed, film.