Fantasia 09 Review: ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE UNDEAD
[A Fantasia review already? Yes, you can thank their sponsoring of two outdoor screenings in collaboration with the Montreal Fringe festival for that. And while I think much more highly of Jordan Galland's Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are undead than does our reviewer here, I nonetheless heartily thank Matthew Grinshpun for sending in his thoughts.]
If you grew up in America, unless you inhabited some rare bubble of human decency, you are familiar with the summer camp t-shirt. The format is standardized; the front of the shirt bears the name of some bucolic refuge tucked away in the continent's nether regions, while the back presents a list (top 10 or otherwise) of distinctly unfunny inside jokes. Presumably, these opaque references conceal pearls of nostalgia, gag-lines to snicker over with former camp buddies as the years erode what remains of childhood. Of course, for everybody who isn't a part of this tight circle of adepts, the shirt's wearer comes off as something of a knave. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead, the independent film world's latest shot at inane vampire comedy, has the same intent as a summer-camp t-shirt. And, predictably, the same effect.
The misery sets in as soon as you read the picture's roster. Jake Hoffman (son of that Hoffman) stars as slacker play director Julian Marsh, while Sean Lennon (son of that Lennon) is responsible for the score, and Devon Aoki (though that Aoki less than a household name) features as Hoffman's sometimes-girlfriend. It's a small wonder that director Jordan Galland ended up hustling such a dream-team of silver spooned scions of pop-culture into an no-budget production.
Julian, son of a Manhattan doctor, spends his days luring a procession of eager trollops to his bedroom, where, upon waking, they discover (in a joke repeated ad nauseam) that Marsh Junior's sultry garçonnière is actually an adjunct of Marsh Senior's office. Cue Marsh Senior's punchline harangue. Suddenly motivated by an ad seeking a "young, controllable" human to take the reins of a comic, vampire production of Hamlet, our young idler refashions himself a theater director. Mistakenly employing his equally slothful best friend and former girlfriend in the lead roles, Julian comes to discover that this particular production is a lot less comic, and a lot more vampire, than he expected. Predictable postmodern hijinks (Tom Stoppard reference included) ensue.
It is, admittedly, a moderately funny premise for a movie, but the whole thing comes off as an inside joke on the part of its cosseted cast. Each major scene is set off by a cheeky, pun-based intertitle (ie, "Death of a Pale Man..." I cringe at the idea of repeating any others). The middling calibre of this humor sets the mood for the comedy that follows, largely consumed by floundering efforts at verbal wit, presumably aimed at tickling the egos of accomplished Bachelors of Arts. You might attribute this to some misguided attempt at aping the Coen brothers' trademark, thwarted erudition. But that's being pretty damned charitable. The jokes never hit their mark. It's not clear where that mark was, in the first place.
You can't blame the actors, who deliver their lines with a singular lack of conviction, for not taking their work very seriously. But no veil of irony, no matter how thick, can obscure the fundamental stupidity of a film fully aware of its mediocrity. Failed insight can be passed off as sarcasm. But failed irony is just dull.
Review by Matthew Grinshpun.
