Bunk Rock.

Rating: 5/10 (15 April 2007)

Will Ferrell's comedic stance is centered around exposing all the uncomfortable little flaws inherent in existing as a human being. All those embarrassing characteristics we all would rather not mention about ourselves are trotted out one after another. That said, a comedic noir seems a perfect fit for him, since noir usually features a helpless main character being toyed with by a higher power of some sort.
So far so good.
The task these film-makers set out to achieve was to take the noir form and extend the narrative in a new direction. One in which our hapless victim actually takes control half-ways through, becoming the God who is doing the capricious toying.
You see, I prefer to believe that it is actually Harold who is the author of this tale, writing about an author who is writing about him (who at one point is writing about her writing about him writing about her!). With help from an actual writing instructor, he is even depicted explicitly writing the very narration that he himself hears. Indeed it is Harold in control of the film at the end, and it is he who changes the outcome.
It's a clever experiment with writing itself and is in fact a movie about its own screenplay. This idea of art about itself is really becoming a part of the very fabric of our culture. It's tricky business, but as demonstrated here, film-makers are finding ways to solve the various problems associated with bringing these notions to the everyday film-goer.
But. What spoils this for me was the purposeless use of music. There seems to be a growing trend in which film-makers selfishly indulge in choosing songs based simply on their own personal tastes in music, regardless of relevance to the film. (Tarantino comes to mind.) This desire to refer to one's own record collection is quite an annoyance, and basically states, "Look how great is my taste in music!" Simply put, punk rock (and specifically British punk rock) has no place here. Consider that the song Harold sings to his love interest is one that that particular character would never know at all, much less by heart. It is an esoteric genre piece which typically attracts an opposite personality type to that of Harold, an ultra-square IRS number-head.