There's one thing that all filmmakers need to understand. If you're making a movie, there has to be something about it worth watching. It doesn't matter if your budget is 100 million dollars or whatever you could steal from your mom's purse. It doesn't matter if you're an Oscar winner or a video store clerk who can only film on the weekends. It doesn't matter if you've got a cast straight out of Entertainment Weekly or just a bunch of friends you're paying with pizza and beer. There needs to be something about your film that's worth watching.
That doesn't mean it has to be a laugh-a-minute or a non-stop thrill ride. It doesn't have to be brilliant or profound. It doesn't have to shake your audience to the core, dazzle their perceptions or leave them standing in applause as the end credits role. A movie only has to have something, anything worth watching.
That last half of The Fittest is worth watching, but I can't imagine too many people will ever know that because the first 40something minutes is like watching the paint dry on a fat man's toenails. That first half isn't funny. It isn't dramatic. It isn't unusual. It's isn't subversive. It isn't clever. It isn't outrageous. It isn't titillating. It isn't bad enough to be worth mocking. The first half of The Fittest is like a mumbling void or a barren desert the viewer has to trudge through. If you make the journey, you do find a bit of an oasis on the other side but not a nice enough one to justify the trek and who's going to bother in the first place. I would be shocked if at least 50% of the people who try to watch this film don't give up before the 20 minute mark.
Broken up into 4 chapters with the Darwinesque titles of Natural Selection, Origin of the Species, Descent of Man and Survival of the Fittest, this is the story of Freddy (Jason Madera). He's a bald, impotent, tire selling schmuck with a boorish boss (Joshua Crook), a cowardly kiss ass co-worker (Chris Ferry) and a wife (Angela Grant) who tells Freddy one night she no longer finds him attractive. That launches Freddy into the arms of the tire store slut (Christina Caparoula), who also happens to be banging his boss. When the slut tells him he miraculously got her pregnant and his wife rediscovers his sexual appeal, Freddy is squeezed between what he has and what he wants.
Now, the 2nd half of The Fittest sees these characters engage in more and more extreme behavior to satisfy the primal desires and is not bad. There's a nice mix of humor and angst and Angela Grant gives an engaging performance. She's the only one here who comes off like she could and should make a living at this acting thing.
Is any of it good enough to make sitting through the 1st half worthwhile? No. The first 40something minutes of this movie is a flavorless tapioca of mediocre acting, mediocre writing and mediocre and very low budget filmmaking. The dialog is sparse. The characters are flat. The camera work is barely a step above public access in technique and a step below Sesame Street in imagination.
If you edited the 1st half of The Fittest with a hacksaw and got it down to about 10 minutes, then tightened up the 2nd half to about 35, this would have been an admirable film festival entry. At around a hour and a half long, it's another worthless hunk of dreck clogging up video store shelves and bandwidth, waiting for some unknowing schmuck to rent or buy it. Don't be that schmuck.
That doesn't mean it has to be a laugh-a-minute or a non-stop thrill ride. It doesn't have to be brilliant or profound. It doesn't have to shake your audience to the core, dazzle their perceptions or leave them standing in applause as the end credits role. A movie only has to have something, anything worth watching.
That last half of The Fittest is worth watching, but I can't imagine too many people will ever know that because the first 40something minutes is like watching the paint dry on a fat man's toenails. That first half isn't funny. It isn't dramatic. It isn't unusual. It's isn't subversive. It isn't clever. It isn't outrageous. It isn't titillating. It isn't bad enough to be worth mocking. The first half of The Fittest is like a mumbling void or a barren desert the viewer has to trudge through. If you make the journey, you do find a bit of an oasis on the other side but not a nice enough one to justify the trek and who's going to bother in the first place. I would be shocked if at least 50% of the people who try to watch this film don't give up before the 20 minute mark.
Broken up into 4 chapters with the Darwinesque titles of Natural Selection, Origin of the Species, Descent of Man and Survival of the Fittest, this is the story of Freddy (Jason Madera). He's a bald, impotent, tire selling schmuck with a boorish boss (Joshua Crook), a cowardly kiss ass co-worker (Chris Ferry) and a wife (Angela Grant) who tells Freddy one night she no longer finds him attractive. That launches Freddy into the arms of the tire store slut (Christina Caparoula), who also happens to be banging his boss. When the slut tells him he miraculously got her pregnant and his wife rediscovers his sexual appeal, Freddy is squeezed between what he has and what he wants.
Now, the 2nd half of The Fittest sees these characters engage in more and more extreme behavior to satisfy the primal desires and is not bad. There's a nice mix of humor and angst and Angela Grant gives an engaging performance. She's the only one here who comes off like she could and should make a living at this acting thing.
Is any of it good enough to make sitting through the 1st half worthwhile? No. The first 40something minutes of this movie is a flavorless tapioca of mediocre acting, mediocre writing and mediocre and very low budget filmmaking. The dialog is sparse. The characters are flat. The camera work is barely a step above public access in technique and a step below Sesame Street in imagination.
If you edited the 1st half of The Fittest with a hacksaw and got it down to about 10 minutes, then tightened up the 2nd half to about 35, this would have been an admirable film festival entry. At around a hour and a half long, it's another worthless hunk of dreck clogging up video store shelves and bandwidth, waiting for some unknowing schmuck to rent or buy it. Don't be that schmuck.
