It takes a lot of passion and soul to make any piece of art. Whether it's a film, a book, music, whatever artform it manifests in, the act of putting all of yourself into some kind of creative expression is incredibly admirable. There's many moments in the monologue Anton Ego gives in the final scene of Ratatouille that really resonate with me, but I'm particularly fond of the one line that goes "in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so." That's very much something that needs to be kept in mind when examining any piece of art and it's an idea most definitely reinforced by Brigsby Bear, a superb new indie dramedy that put a big smile on my face and warm n' fuzzy feelings in my heart.
Turns out, Ted and Emily aren't the biological parents of James. They kidnapped him when he was a baby and have been keeping him away from any contact with the normal world for 25 years. Reunited with his real parents, Greg (Matt Walsh) and Louise (Michaela Watkins), James has immense difficulty trying to come to terms with his new reality and looks to Brigsby Bear as a source of comfort. Turns out though, the show was just made by Ted as a way to instill lessons (like how curiosity is innately bad) into his kidnapped son in an entertaining venue. Wanting closure on the show he loves so much, James sets out to make his own movie continuation of the Brigsby Bear mythology.
There's lots to love in Bigsby Bear but chief among them is just how sweetly it treats James and his plight. While the difficulties James has with assimilating to conventional reality drums up some laughs, it never feels like the characters being robbed of any chance of depth in favor of cheap mockery to drum up equally cheap laughs. No, the audience is supposed to be totally on James side throughout the movie and so are the writers (Kyle Mooney and Kevin Costello), who treats James and his quirks, including his connection with Brigsby Bear, in a considerate manner that, again, places an emphasis on characterization instead of mining all that James has gone through for fodder for subpar gags.
Because of that decision, the weight of all that time James spent isolated from the rest of the world really comes across in a way that just breaks your heart, like how he still does a pre-dinner time prayer/handshake relation he did with his captors in the real world. The poor guy just can't break away from tradition, his entire mind has been irreparably shaped by both all that time spent away from his family and the Brigsby Bear TV show. This movie unearths plenty of humanity in the heightened (though, tragically, not uncommon in the real world) scenario of James coming back into the real world and it applies that same level of storytelling compassion for when James embarks on his quest to make a feature film continuation of the show that has so greatly shaped his psyche.
Watching James connect with other people by way of a shared unity deriving from the passion of creating art is just incredibly fun and heartwarming to watch. While too many comedies (and even just films in general), both in modern times and in past eras, have found themselves leaning ever so hard on detachment and distancing themselves from anything even remotely emotional, Brigsby Bear is all about embracing emotional moments in James quest to finish up this movie that could have been treacly schmaltz in lesser movies. Recurring examples of pathos are accompanied by a number of humorous moments, including Greg Kinnear as a cop who's really more of a thespian at heart.
You know what really holds this movie together though? Kyle Mooney, a guy whose had some stand-out moments on Saturday Night Live (a show that, frankly, doesn't seem to know what to do with Mooney's unique style of humor most of the time) and comes into his own as a leading man here. Throughout his stints on YouTube and on SNL, Mooney's whole schtick has been talking and acting in an incredibly awkward manner, he's the king of stumbling over his own words or off-kilter body mannerisms. Applying a more tragic layer to those traits of Mooney's traditional comedic persona turns out to be something Kyle Mooney is more than up to, as he's able to believably portray this character in a way that utilizes recurring aspects of Mooney's comedy while also creating a distinctly new character that offers Mooney the chance to show off his ability to handle darker and more dramatic material. He also gets some killer humorous lines too like his genuine reassurance to his sister that he's not real bear when he's wearing the Brigsby Bear costume.
Dave McCary (a guy who actually worked alongside Kyle Mooney back when they were just doing sketch comedy on YouTube) is the one in the director's chair and he shows real promise in his debut feature as a feature-length film director. The way he's able to emphasize a massively naturalistic visual aesthetic does an excellent job of visually reinforcing that James is now inhabiting a domain far far far removed from the fictitious world of Brigsby Bear. The work put in by McNary and the cast & crew on the excellent dramedy Brigsby Bear, like that speech by Anton Ego, reminds us all again how much heart & soul goes into any piece of art and a particularly great movie like Brigsby Bear is bound to have an impact on viewers (or at least myself) akin to the impact the movies titular kid show had on James Hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment