Review of The Art of Self-Defense (2019) by Brunovn00 — 05 Apr 2020

Oh. My God. This is definitely not the movie the trailers tell you it is. It's a movie that seems like a generic karate comedy but my God this was a lot more than that. The first act was a bit slow and there wasn't too much comedy (In fact, I think it starts almost in the same depressing tone as the Joker movie) and the comedy it is isn't that funny but once Casey (Jesse Eisenberg) starts taking karate lessons the movie starts to be a BLAST. The comedy is top notch and it doesn't rely in the typical jokes you might expect from a karate movie (Like characters falling down or characters failing spectacularly at doing something, etc). The characters are so fun to watch. The protagonist and antagonist are fleshed out perfectly. The rest of the characters are more like background characters but they fit well in the story. There's a lack of music, which is fine, I guess but it didn't fit the tone. I mean, this movie needed more music because for me, a movie without music is a lot more grounded in reality but this movie isn't really grounded. So it lacks score music and when there's score music is just extremely forgettable. I ADORED the twists and turns and how this movie turned out into something smart and pretty dense.

Overall, it's not a perfect movie, but it's a movie I would definitely rewatch. I'll just probably skip the first half hour.