Full Frontal

Full Frontal is an experimental movie, shot quickly and cheaply, mostly on digital video and using only natural lighting. The dialog and plot points are largely improvised. It's supposed to recreate the joy of moviemaking for its big stars, like Director Steven Soderbergh, and actors Catherine Keener, David Hyde Pierce, Julia Roberts and Blair Underwood. This type of filmmaking lets them expose their natural talent and their real abilities, free of the restraints of the Hollywood machine.

What a bunch of losers. These are whiny, uncreative and boring assholes. So, their multi-million dollar jobs are unsatisfying and limiting. Well, boo-hoo-hoo. So are $5.25 an hour jobs, but you don't see me expecting moviegoers to pay $8 to hear me whine about it. I'll give it to you for free. That's the Amerifuckin' way.

When average folks want a creative outlet, they create ugly Geocities web sites. "My kitten's great!" and "Our Goddamn son is the best fucking baby ever." When average people have something to say, they steer their conversations with the waitresses at Denny's in that direction.

"Can I still get the Grand Slam?"

"That's weekdays only. Did either of you want coffee?"

"Don't you hate pregnant hippies? Like we want their dirty little offspring crapping on our lawns too."

Just because Full Frontal was made cheaply doesn't mean it's cheap to see. Why did I have to pay full price for a tossed off heap of garbled crap? It's the ultimate of movie star arrogance to think we should pay to see them jerking off. Well, actually, I'd pay to see a lot of celebrities literally jerking off, but I don't make enough money to waste it watching them figuratively do it. I say that if they have this huge massive sense of creative unfulfillment, they should spend some of the millions we give them to fulfill it on their own time. Or if they're rich but cheap-asses, they can make a Geocities web site.

I don't remember the plot exactly. It's a jumble of tedious, overspoken and underwritten scenes, shot on digital to let us know the actors are slumming it. Somehow grainy digital video and shitty lighting translates to "honesty" for Hollywood's elite. Rather than actually slum it, or suffer for their art, they can just shoot it on digital video. They still go home to their big houses in their foreign sports cars.

A bunch of disparate Los Angeles lives are going to collide at the birthday party of a famous producer. Within this story, and shot on glossy 35 mm film, is a movie this famous producer made. It's a painfully tedious and pointless romance between Julia Roberts as a writer and an up-and-coming actor. The movie-within-the-movie is too shitty and boring to be a funny satire. It takes up way too much time on screen for us to ignore it. I have no idea whether it's supposed to be serious or what the point of it is. All I know is a shitty movie is still a shitty movie, even if it's wrapped up inside a shittier movie.

Then, there is a parody. That's the movie being filmed within that movie-within-the-movie? That one's a parody of an action movie, but it parodies the exact kind of shit people like Soderbergh, Brad Pitt and Roberts have taken our money for in the past. Ha ha, yeah, that's really hilarious that you're now charging us to make fun of the shit you've shoveled our way before. How clever of you to acknowledge the crap you agree to appear in at our expense.

The main movie is about how unhappy all these Hollywood players and fringe characters are. They all improvise dialog about how miserable they are, and it's stunningly banal, but with stuttering to let us know it's "real.". The actors in Full Frontal all felt they were creatively stifled by Hollywood, and yet when they open their mouths it's like a fat gassy man: a lot of stinky noise without saying anything. Fuck yeah! Hollywood's right. Stifle the dullards.

Movie stars have money coming out their asses because we pay them to help us escape and forget about our every day life. Movies when done right, plop us down into other worlds and other adventures, far removed from our shitty lives and jobs, or lack thereof. Full Frontal wants us to pay to hear fabulously wealthy celebrities piss and moan that they're lives are pathetic and pointless too. They always say their lives are boring in celebrity interviews, but in a disingenuous way. They say it while secretly believing they're fabulous. Now, we learn, they really are a bunching of boring asses, but they can't even see that fact beyond their publicists, sycophants and hangers-on.

And really, if all these big celebrities want to get honest and tell us how Hollywood works, why don't they tell us their own stories? I mean, why change the names and thinly veil it all if what you're trying to do is get at truth? All the shitty lighting, bad sound and grainy footage can't hide a fraud. One Finger for Full Frontal. What a turd. Next time, kids, make a site at GeoCities and save us all the trouble.