Frisson of Performance

Rating: Null/10 (15 October 2006)

I guess the most important element of a comment should come first and be concise: I found this funny, really funny until the end where the necessities of resolving the story begin to grind.
There's something about comedy. For me, I like to laugh. And after I do, I like to think about why. Nothing tells you more about a person  even yourself  than knowing what you think is funny. And sometimes that is funny in its own right Black's brand of humor is common enough: be ridiculous by extending common poses in extreme directions without losing the reference to the original. And to do it physically, with those same poses.
Hess's brand of humor is something different: to invert exaggeration, and thus exaggerate the straight man role. His "Napoleon Dynamite" is a sort of Stan Laurel to the whole world.
Black's stuff doesn't have enough gas under normal circumstances to do more than provide color to a real movie. That rock school thing was ugly, embarrassing because its attempt at the humor of embarrassment failed. But this finds a sort of sweet spot. I think it is because this Hess guy plays so cleverly with what it means to be a movie.
Professional wrestling is one of North America's more overtly ridiculous performance arts and the main fold here is goofing on that strutting sort of presentation. This also folds into religious ritual which is about as popular in the US, though without the macho overtones from Latin societies.
Where it falls out of that sweet spot is when our wrestler actually has to fight in the last two matches. That's when things tilt; the humor becomes subservient to the story instead of the other way around.
Story is always what kills these things. If this were a TeeVee skit that repeated for 10 minutes every Saturday night, we wouldn't expect a story. But for 30 bucks or so, we do. So we are obliged, but it surely gets in the way, except to remind us that what we see is as manufactured in presentation as those goofy wrestlers.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.