(IMAGE: Get Out Inc.)
Get Out Inc. 2022. Comedy. 71 minutes.
RATING: 0 out of 4
There really ought to be a rule that for a director’s first narrative feature, they do not get to evoke the name of a cinematic master in vain. (Unless, perhaps, they’re Tommy Wiseau name-dropping Orson Welles and Tennessee Williams, because that’s just fuel on the fire.) If you’re Jay Meyers and his brother Mark, and feel remotely inclined to compare the movie you’re making to Buster Keaton’s Three Ages, the final product had damn well better be close to a comedic masterpiece. Unfortunately for the siblings Meyers, however, today is not Opposite Day. If there’s a single laugh to be had in Three Eras, it’s possibly hidden in the post-credits music video that features CG skeletons boning. And that probably sounds funnier when I write it than it actually plays.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where the brothers went wrong, because some of what they come up with ought to at least have the appeal of spontaneous improv comedy. Introduced by an absurd-looking Father Time – with closeups of his lips to show his makeup smeared on his fake beard – Three Eras looks at the idea of commerce-based power in three time periods: caveman days, the old west, and today. The same actors recur in both, and since they are not credited by whom they play in the credits, we can take a wild guess the Meyerses are the two who look most alike.
The caveman segment can kindly be said to aspire to The Flintstones; it’s more reminiscent of Adam Rifkin’s Homo Erectus, a movie so bad even the director/star admits it. Mercifully, it at least one-ups that films tiresome “homo” jokes by casually featuring a gay couple. Its main premise, however, all based on some cavemen being monosyllabic and others being smart, in terrible wigs to boot, just don’t play. A potential turn towards mild religious criticism unfortunately goes nowhere.
Later, in the old west, a none-too-smart cowboy plans to sell his land to the railroad company, but must persuade his intransigent neighbor to go along with the plan. This storyline periodically changes aspect ratios to attempt silent comedy-style chase sequences, which defy the point by being in real-time, color, and augmented with dialogue. In the present day, three obnoxious real-estate heirs (clearly based on the Trump brothers and Jared) bully their dad’s assistant into filming a bunch of would-be viral content starring themselves.
Each segment is visually, distinctively different, yet the filmmakers’ evident lack of faith in their audience’s intelligence means new title cards nearly every time there’s a transition. Father Time also periodically cuts back in with a booming and probably dubbed voice, while anachronistic homemade synth score punctuates every era.
So what went wrong here, apart from the obvious? At least in the first two segments, it’s a question of tone. The caveman scenes aren’t cheesy enough to pull off a Fred and Barney vibe, and the monosyllabic grunters aren’t committed enough to take seriously. In the old west segment, there are parts where a viewer can definitely see the construction of a joke in theory. One sequence involving outlaws escalating their lies to a bank teller feels like something we should laugh at, if only because it’s the first such scene with a genuine straight man. And yet…the banter just doesn’t hit that lunacy level it ought.
Compare to Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Cannibal: The Musical, made in a similar setting for an equally low budget. Even under extreme constraints, that one still holds up alongside their subsequent works because they both go all-in. The Meyers brothers and their costars feel like they always feel they’re smarter than the characters they should be playing, and so never quite commit to a genuine, guileless stupidity that might make the scenes work.
As for the third segment, it’s no Alex Moffat and Mikey Day on SNL Weekend Update. In small doses, these characters show some potential, but the jokes are mostly obvious: big game hunting, diet soda, dad’s gonna be mad, and so on. Yet Jay Meyers’ straight-faced claim on his official website that, “I one time helped former Gov. Rod Blagojevich defend Elvis Presley’s Blue Hawaii in front of a film critic and an audience of film students,” proves he can be funny, if not always intentionally.
Since every story revolves around a business deal or sale, and the disastrous consequences and human stupidity that ensues, it’s tempting to suggest the movie has something to say about capitalism. But if it’s anything deeper than “it’s stupid, because people are stupid and people with more money are stupider,” I missed it. Maybe Father Time can try to explain it to me yet again one of these days.
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