Review of Frank (2014) by Wayne K — 15 May 2018

As much as I am a fan of quirky black comedies, Frank was still a massive disappointment. Films like In Bruges and The Lobster tackled important moral issues while also being laugh out loud funny. Frank has a great joke here and there and a few instances of amusing physical comedy, but most of it is slow, meandering and alienating.

As a statement on mental illness it has very little to say, and as a commentary on the difficulty of holding a band together, there's nothing here that This Is Spinal Tap didn't do much better over 30 years ago.

But its biggest flaw by a mile its 3rd act. You know those awful, formulaic romantic comedies where the lead couple have some kind of misunderstanding, break up and spend the tail end of the movie moping about it? Well Frank suffers badly from this.

The last 20-30 minutes (It feels much longer, trust me) has no laughs, no meaningful exchanges and is so miserable and drawn out that any goodwill generated by the first half is completely squandered by the second, as if the filmmakers ran out of fresh ideas and stretched the ones they had left to breaking point.

I don't want to dismiss it entirely, since there's some originality, the premise is promising and Fassbender is terrific as usual. But what must have seemed mind-blowing on paper is rendered mediocre on screen by languid pacing, a lack of jokes and an unforgivably turgid 3rd act.