South By Southwest ‘08: Run, Fatboy, Run

(Reprinted from Short End Magazine)

Finally, the world gets an answer to the question, “What can David Schwimmer do from the director’s chair?” The question is, who was asking?

Simply put, this film is everything that is wrong with contemporary American cinema.

Schwimmer, whose whipped-puppy thespianism graces the TV set of every cube monkey twenty-something at 5:30 sharp, when they flip on Friends so that they don’t kick their own dog around, has apparently decided that his sitcom success has proven that he has his thumb firmly on the pulse of America. My only fear is that he may be right.
From this crackerjack comedic mind could only come a romantic comedy so irretrievably insipid. Throughout its hundred-minute running time, America’s Favorite Everyman manages to not only sully the good names of such talent far surpassing his own as Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz), scribe Michael Ian Black (Stella, The State), Hank Azaria (The Simpsons), various cast members of The Office (both British and American), in the process he spawns an entry into the vernacular:

Schwimmer (v.) – “1. to package for mass appeal, render broad, mediocre, or lowest common denominator

2. to botch, bungle, or otherwise singularly fuck up

3. to render unfunny

ex. – “On the return flight, the pilot totally schwimmered the landing and had to take it around for another pass.”

“You really schwimmered that joke, broham.”

The brilliant Pegg and his usually inventive comedy is reduced to the eye of a shitstorm that swirls about him, Katrina-like, as he attempts to anchor everything via rampant mugging between his painfully bad dialogue. Much of the blame must be assigned to Michael Ian Black, whose uninspired scrawlings of utter trex doom any prospect of humor before this bum horse leaves the gate on its swift journey to last place, a mercy gunshot wound to the head, and the Elmer’s factory. Their one good idea apparently being to acquire Pegg for their comedy, the only things Schwimmer and Black feel necessary to give him to do are pratfalls, passing wind, popping blisters of pus onto people’s faces, running a benefit race for erectile dysfunction (that’s comedy, folks), and falling down some more. Pegg’s inherent likeability manages to shine through, a remarkable feat given the circumstances, but his performance in no way justifies the surrounding maelstrom of ineptitude and bile. When you stand in the rain, you’re bound to get wet, and Pegg’s presence in Run Fatboy Run proves a new adage: when you stand in a shitstorm, you’re going to get shitty.

It is impossible to overstate the depths of artlessness and crudity that Run, Fatboy, Run repeatedly returns to like a dog to its own vomit. Ostensibly about a guy trying to win his ex-girlfriend back by running a marathon, the gaping plot holes are nearly big enough to cram Schwimmer’s ego into, and this film doesn’t merely insult the viewer’s intelligence repeatedly and flagrantly, it slanders its mother, father, children, creed, and then composes a salty limerick about your dead grandmother while dancing a jig on her grave.

This is the kind of film where, any time exposition is needed, a character need only flip on the TV to find a news crew filming the object or person in question, where scatology is shamelessly alternated with sentimentality, where every ‘twist’ is telegraphed miles in advance, and where, if the viewers ever have any doubt about what emotion they’re supposed to be feeling at a given moment, they need merely listen for the stock musical cues which ram home the schmaltz or the clichéd punch line, depending on the demands of the artificial plot.

If you have the least modicum of respect for any of the individuals involved with this motion picture, do yourself a favor and do not see it, or you will find yourself disenchanted not just with them, but humanity as a whole, and, mostly likely, praying for sudden nuclear holocaust. The sight of the guy next to you, laughing along with this film, could be enough to give him a popcorn-flecked Columbian necktie, despite the fact that you’ve been friends for twenty years, and he’s the godfather to your child.

In closing, if you’re stuck watching Run Fatboy Run as an in-flight movie, walk out.

-Penny Dreadful, March 2008