(Bridge and Acorn Entertainment)
LAMA Distribution, 2023. comedy. 104 min.
Grade: 2 out of 4
Between stints as a film critic, and sometimes during them, I’ve had the occasion to work in customer service. Several occasions, in fact. And over the course of several decades, I’ve seen the same types of people recur. One of them, invariably, is the middle-aged burnout – I’ve seen that guy in multiple iterations, and I’ve ultimately been that guy. But I don’t see a lot of movies about that guy. Kevin Smith’s Clerks 2 came close to the mark…3, not so much. Now, from under-the-radar multi-hyphenate Angus Benfield, Yellow Bird attempts to give that type of guy some nobility and onscreen respect.
Yellow Bird appears to be his fifth feature as director; he usually but not always plays a lead role and writes the scripts as well. This time, the writing honors go to Tony Jerris, which may explain why the comedic aspects of this comedy drama don’t fit Benfield’s lead performance particularly well. As an actor, he brings a lived-in weight to his aging stockboy character, Jake Rush. But rather than draw humor from the pathos, Jerris’ script superimposes a lot of forced, shticky business that works against the identification we want to have with Jake. Then again, this type of comedy would work against pretty much anything, because it’s just not funny. It’s the kind of movie that perfectly casts an actress to play a parody version of Alanna “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson, and has her actually say, “I was watching Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” lest there be a single soul who misses the point for a millisecond.
Benfield does play well opposite Michael Maclane’s Scotty, the kind of power-tripping teen firmly lodged in the manager position at the Yellow Bird grocery store because his father owns the chain. Between them, the dynamic of overqualified burnout sucking it up as a jerky know-it-all gets vicarious payback on every adult who ever held him down…well, it feels all too familiar to anyone who’s lived it. When the tables inevitably turn, it happens almost too soon – save the top heel for the main event! Perhaps less identifiable is the fact that Jake hallucinates – maybe – a talking garden gnome. But as voiced by Brian Doyle-Murray, it does deliver the most convincing performance in the feature.
Other acting highlights include Kathy Garver as Jake’s mother with dementia, showcasing the more gleeful side of encroaching obliviousness than movies about Alzheimer’s usually do (it does exist!), and trans model Plastic Martyr as Krystal, Jake’s best friend in his AA group. Lowlights include Jake’s broadly stereotypical soon-to-be-ex-wife Ellie (Ena O’Rourke) who serves mainly as an excuse to insert tone-deaf, unfunny reality show spoofs. It’s probably not O’Rourke’s fault she’s stuck trying to broadly satirize 20 year-old tropes with all the subtlety – but none of the sincerity — of Tommy Wiseau being torn apart by Lisa.
If Benfield focused more on Jake’s general travails accepting a minimum wage job after losing everything, rather than making it about a campy, terrible wife actively taking everything and making him miserable throughout, Yellow Bird would be more fun to watch. Kevin Smith may belabor the same jokes over and over in his latest Clerks, but they’re at least recognizable as jokes rooted in character. Benfield and his cast create characters, but the script forces them into punchlines rather than organically drawing humor from their realities. Granted, small towns can be behind the times, but are we really to believe the largest local grocery store doesn’t have a website? Another aspect of the story revolves around shooting a TV commercial, which when complete goes for a kind of awkwardness humor that none of the rest of the movie even tries for. It’s an interesting look at how everything else maybe should have been played – an Office-like tone that’s too deadpan for Benfield’s broader directorial impulses.
So goodbye, little Yellow Bird. You tried too hard to stay up in that bananas tree, when more grounding would paradoxically have helped the material to fly.