Review of Frank (2014) by V H — 24 Oct 2014

Jon (Domhnall Gleeson) is a young wannabe songwriter who has a boring office job and lives with his parents. One day, by shear chance, he happens upon a band in sudden need of a keyboard player and being a keyboard player himself, he offers up his services. He arrives at the gig at the appointed hour to discover that the lead singer is a guy named Frank (Michael Fassbender) who's wearing an enormous papier-mache head that looks like a grownup version of Davey from the "Davey and Goliath" cartoon. Frank invites Jon back to play what he thinks is a second gig but turns out to be an extended recording session in a remote island cabin that drags on for months.

Frank's head is not just a stage gimmick; he doesn't even take it off to bathe or eat and none of his fellow band members, who all think he's is a genius, have ever seen him without it. They include a bitchy theremin player named Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and a surly French couple, all of whom despise Jon and resent Frank's apparent affection for him. The only one besides Frank who's even nice to him is the band's manager, who confides to Jon that he has a mannequin fetish.

Everything about "Frank" is weird. From the giant head to the name of the band ("Soronprfbs" - pronounced the way it's spelled, I presume) to just about every quirkerific scene. It starts out funny-weird but after a while, the funny goes away and just becomes weird-weird and dark-weird.

I can see "Frank" becoming a cult hit, the sort of thing that draws the stoner crowd to the midnight movies. Even sober, it was very amusing until the characters started crossing that fine line between eccentricity to mental illness. As it turns out, crazy minus humor is not much fun to sit through.