Review of Peep World (2010) by Spencer S — 22 Nov 2011

Quirk is my bread and butter. Almost always I side with these critically flawed comedies, because I like the misfit, the outcast, the central character having the mouth of a sailor when they're a ten year old blonde WASP or have an obsession with bees.

What could have been a phenomenal, if not clinically brutal portrayal of a waylaid family of misfits comes off as a tepid interpretation of other films' Wikipedia pages. The cast, who all have embodied the kind of weird, disjointed characters that this film is made of, are given very little to use in order to further their storylines along.

The entire film is based on the fact that one of four children writes a work of fiction based on his family's dysfunction. The fact that everyone hates each other right off the bat and tells each other on a regular basis could have made for some vicious attacks, a far more eccentric patriarch, and an interconnected obscurity with the rest of the world.

There's no wit or sharp dialogue, nothing that comes off as edgy or the definition of fun. Besides that this has been done a thousand times before, and without true oddballs this is just another family drama.

They're supposed to have another layer based on the tell-all book written by a brother, showing each sibling's problems and pitfalls and shining a light on the faults that are shocking and obscene; yet we go through the entire film and don't learn anything about them as people.

The only thing I could relate to was Rainn Wilson's character. He still holds the reigns as a black sheep, and gives a truly heartbreaking speech near the end expressing the hurt of his brother's exploitation.

Sadly his character, the best of the bunch, is severely underwritten. Hall has the most human of all the roles, and the actions he goes through to be in control are wrenching, but the dinner scene felt off track from what was previously shown of him.

Instead of fleshing out the main character they used him to create that sucky ending. Oh, and the entire film has voice over narration by Lewis Black, who I'm guessing is only associated with this because it's comedy, and they briefly reveal the family is Jewish.

Why? I suspect that's the quirkiest thing they could wrangle, which just makes me depressed. Watch it as a drama, and at least you'll understand some key aspect of family dysfunction, but you won't actually care at the end.