Holy crap. You know how I’ve been wanting to see these guys’ films? Okay, we can stop that now - I never want to see a film by nearly any of these people ever again.

This show is really bad, and the only thing worse than the show itself are the actual films these guys are producing. That said, here’s my rundown, with capsule reviews (weighted on a curve, because let’s be honest - these movies are pretty terrible), of all 18(!) one-minute ‘comedy’ films we suffered through last night:

Dance Man by Adam Stein: Take one horrendously overplayed concept, the likes of which are probably apt material for a high school improv troupe, add a dash of horrible narration. Figure out a way to throw in some murky, miscalculated shots and you get? Almost a movie. D.

Deliver Me by Carolina Zorilla de San Martin: Mildly racist and totally unfunny, Carolina Zorilla de San Martin’s loathsome diatribe about the conflicts between motherhood and ‘the modern woman’ - petulant, vile, pussy-loathing shit - a woman directed this? F.

Spaced Out by Andrew Hunt: Hey this actually almost feels like a scene from a movie. And he uses puppets! This is the guy who did the Romancing the Stone pitch I talked about a few posts ago, and you know what? This is the same sort of mildly comedic proto-Zemeckis stuff I was expecting. B-

Wack Alley Cab by Kenny Luby: Neither needs nor deserves any comment. Just watch the damn thing. F–.

Bus #1 by Hilary Graham: A few seconds into this movie, a woman announces loudly, to a stranger on a bus, “Aw jeeez. I have to pee so badly!!” It actually manages to go downhill from there. Graham, like Luby, is being positioned as an outsider, with no real experience as a filmmaker, and it shows: she has a neophyte’s taste for the broadest, least-competently executed potty humor possible. This film ends with a jogger smelling pee (!?) from a coffee cup on the side of the road. Wacky! D-.

The Big Bad Heist by the improbably named Marty Martin: Or, how to not make an actual movie and get away with it. It’s a lot easier to make a trailer for some only damply amusing heist comedy if you don’t have to let things like plot mechanics, character, and scene construction get in the way. Suffice it to say, it flounders at even its modest task. C.

Lucky Penny by Will Bigham: Garry Marshall has the right word for this: it’s charming. There’s a gleefully anarchic quality to its absorption of Looney Tunes-style slapstick that reflects a clear admiration for the history of cinema. Also: this dude’s backstory is really solid stuff. I’d bet money on Will Bigham at least placing in this competition. B.

To Screw in a Light Bulb by Jessica Brillhart: Overconceptualized and venally unfunny, it finally falls back on that old standard-bearer of comedy: an old Jewish couple, the aggressive wife nagging the wuss husband about his impotence. But really - what in the living hell is going in the first 50 seconds of this ’short’? D+.
Soft by Mateen Kemet: Mateen claims his films come from being an urban black male, and represent his experiences. There’s a degree at which the script of this gets at that experience to an extent, but the eagerness to jump into broad slapstick is annoying, and the first half of this minute-long short is a slog. C-.

Blind Date by Claudia La Bianca: Italians like fart jokes too, apparently. What a pile of crap, and vaguely incoherent too! D-.

Getta Rhoom by Jason Epperson: An almost promising set-up devolves into incoherent ‘dark comedy’ wackiness. I’m not nearly as offended by this as Carrie Fisher was, but yeah, it’s pretty clear this dude isn’t supposed to be a ‘nerd’ like Epperson claims: he’s a tard. Don’t make fun of tards, Epperson. D.
File Size by David May: Mildly amusing, and unlike most of these other films, this seems to express a point of view that’s actually somewhat compelling. The judges chided him for not making a story with a clear ‘beginning, middle, and end’ but that seems to be May’s point. Almost promising. C+.

Danger Zone by Zack Lipovsky, Special Effects Guru: Certainly Lipovsky’s got a solid sense of the technical side of filmmaking (though that robot looks like it was phoned in by some dude playing around with Stratavision 3D) but I don’t see, as Carrie Fisher put it, a ‘beginning, middle, and end’ to this. But. That’s kinda okay, because this brand of visual-tricks filmmaking doesn’t really rely on plot nearly as much as it does the artist’s creativity. So my hat’s off to Lipovsky, who managed to do a sort of elementary school Wes Anderson long-take here. B-.

A Golf Story by Trever James: Obnoxiously cheesed-out production, and doesn’t really work how it’s supposed to, but completely harmless in a way that most of these films aren’t. Nice title, dude. C.

Love in the Year 2007 by Shalini Kantayya. I’m very attracted to Shalini but she’s made a terrible parade-of-short-film-cliches film here. But I think this is more important for another reason. During her comments on the film, Carrie Fisher said that some of the jokes were stale - that at least one joke popped up in Must Love Dogs.

This is Carrie Fisher’s point of reference. Must Love Dogs. This is what the judges are working with. Holy crazy shit. D-.

Please Hold by Phil Hawkins: Hey, someone knows how to light a shot. The joke’s been done, but it’s fairly effective here. But what is with that eerie, ill-advised final shot? C+.

Check Out by Shira-Lee Shalit: Well, Shalit knows how to direct actors certainly, but this film just reminds me of shampoo commercials. Whatever. C+.

Replication Theory by Sam Friedlander: There’s a level on which this film is clearly on a much higher echelon than anything else in this episode - a clear point of view, smart camerawork without a drop of gooey stylization, an enfolding of reality into broad comedy, and a cute reversal at the end. This isn’t going to change the world, but good gravy, that this and Wack Alley Cab were on the same show is astonishing. And here’s something: I actually laughed. B+.
As some of you know, I used to screen and provide coverage of shorts for a certain major American film festival. The question you might be asking: would I pass any of these along to my higher-ups if I got them? And the answer?

No. Not a one.

Well. Maybe Replication Theory. If I’m feeling generous.

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