Captain Fantastic Tires To Be An Inspirational Tale About A Neglectful Selfish Father. It Doesn't Work.

Last year's Sundance Film Festival delivered some unique motion pictures that have stuck around in my mind a year after that festival concluded. There was the comedic classic Hunt For The Wilderpeople, the zany yet thoughtful Swiss Army Man, and of course, Kenneth Lonergan's beautiful meditation on grief Manchester By The Sea. But every film festival has its duds, it's just the law of averages when you're screening a large number of movies. The Hollars was one big star-studded misfire and Captain Fantastic serves as another example of indie feature that debuted at last year's Sundance Film Festival that just doesn't work.

The Hollars Is An Excruciatingly Bad Parody Of Conventional American Indie Movies That...Wait, This Isn't A Parody???

When something tries to be personal in a very un-personal (for lack of a better word) way, the resulting experience is the very definition of "awkward". Trying to watch a person or a story or even just some manufactured item try to be something it's very plainly not is extremely uncomfortable to witness. That emotion basically sums up watching The Hollars, a movie that tries to tell a small-scale story of a dysfunctional family coming back together during a time of crisis very much wants to pluck at your heartstrings and make you laugh with the various quirks of the numerous family members, but it's trying to tell this potentially personal story in the most bland and generic way. None of it has any depth or real insight to it, it very much is the awkward experience of watching a movie try to be something it's not.