Nerdland

<<

Under the Radar

>>

The final film of my 'Animation Month' collection is a title I've been meaning to check out for quite some time. It was screened for one night only, on December 6, 2016, then it was released on other services like video on demand and Netflix.

The concept has aspiring actor, John (Paul Rudd) and aspiring screenwriter, Elliot (Patton Oswalt) looking for fame, making a pact that after all their failures, they'd become famous within the next 24 hours. The more they go about it, the more in over their heads they get.

While on their 24-hour adventure, they keep coming back to this guy dubbed the Nerd King (Hannibal Buress) for advice and help, and for my money, he's probably the funniest character in the movie - just this over the top, ultimate geek guy, who even goes so far as to wear a crown and wield a scepter. He'll probably come off as just cocky and unlikable to others, but for some reason he got me. Think Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons, but cranked to eleven.

As far as the other characters, our leads have their moments, but are overall kinda "meh". They're not really people you'd wanna be friends with, but you might have a drink with them at a social event every now and then. You don't hate them, but you're not exactly a fan of them either. However, their love interests, Sally (Kate Micucci) and Linda (Riki Lindhome) are just downright awful.

Sally and Linda are just two ditzy airheads with "perfect" bodies and absolutely no personalities, unless you can count "over-the-top valley girl" as a personality. For me, they're what kill the movie - bearing in mind I'm talking about the characters, not the actresses portraying them - them, I actually enjoy. What we had here was bad writing.

Now, I didn't HATE this movie, but I didn't come out of it all that impressed either. It ended things on a bit of a weird note, and the overall telling of things was kinda just okay. There are moments the movie pauses just to get weird, and I can't exactly tell if it's for a laugh, or just to get weird for the sake of it. The animation was something I enjoyed, kinda painting this whole dingy world, and often causing discomfort in the appropriate places. I know that sounds weird, but let's just say the animation was effective for what I think they were going for.

With that said, it's not really enough to save the overall film. There were things I liked about it, but there's nothing here that's enough to get me to come back for a rewatch. Every voice actor here has better things under their belts, as does writer, Andrew Kevin Walker, who worked on titles like 'Seven' and 'The Wolfman' from 2010 (I don't care what anyone says, that was an underappreciated movie). So as far as their resumes go, this one's one of their lesser titles.

2/5

---