Review of Rubber (1936) by Stavros A — 01 Sep 2011

So meta it hurts. I love meta ventures, but I felt this didn't have enough of an engaging story to back that up.

Great to have Partridge from The Mentalist and Fat Neil from Community, especially the former, who I think should be in way more films as he's a really unique and decent actor. Having James Parks (Michael Parks' son) was great too.

It was great that they rationalised the nonsensical nature of it all by that speech that Spinella gives at the beginning. It was cool seeing a tire go Cronenberg's Scanners on everyone, but the film never really found its feet I feel. Only some of the jokes and meta moments worked - e.g. I found it funny when Plotnick brought the weelchair bound final viewer a buffet of poisened food (but stupid when he ate it himself), and the "we have to keep going because there's one viewer left" idea was fun.

I'm sure there are a few more deeper metaphors and analgoies in here than I got, but this needed a touch less bizarreness and directionlessness, and more dramatic engagement. It had the vision and smarts, but not the execution.