Storytelling

This film, from indie director Todd Solondz is really two different movies, both of which have to do with storytelling of a sort...the first tale set in a college writing course has Selma Blair as a young woman involved with a cripple who has an affair with her professor and the second story is about Paul Giamatti as a down and out documentary filmmaker who follows a depressed high school kid and his family (including John Goodman and Julie Hagerty) around. Both stories are interesting and offbeat featuring solid acting work and good and involving storylines..They alternate between amusing at times and disturbing at others, often both, though sticking a big red box over a disturbing rape scene is more amusing than it should be... still a fine piece of filmmaking that is definitely worth the price of admission. GRADE: A-

Todd Solondz is guilty of the same tricks at hipness and emotional toying that Hollywood is. Unlike the industry he's trying to buck, he is able to appear sincere only through the blessing of independent coolness. Storytelling is no exception: full of forced irony and one dimensional characters. To his credit I believe he could become a great director if he learned to accept subtlety and soul in his work.

It's not so much that this movie chose to depict a rather nefarious view of humanity; it's that this movie eliminated the possibility of anything but in the world of the characters. If someone made a movie, in this day and age, in which all the characters were happy, secure, whole and loved, a lot of people would be bored. And say that it's not very realistic. Well I was bored. A deep and subtle boredom, that (upon waking) causes one to question whether they're bored; cause that would mean feeling something...when it kind of just feels like nothing. This movie was boring. And it wasn't very realistic.

I really enjoyed both Welcome to the Dollhouse and (especially) Happiness. Unfortunately, Storytelling was horrible. Solondz's detractors have always claimed that he was exploiting his characters and didn't respect them. I disagreed...until now. The only redeeming thing about this film is the performances. Selma Blair and Paul Giamatti leap into their roles with go-for-broke gusto. Gutsy performances. They don't make up for the total lack of a point in either of their vignettes. Avoid this one.

Another abortive, pitiful attempt from Solondz... His problem is that subjects of his films are not interesting at all. You just don't care for them. I wonder, how long will it be, before he starts to film a life of some low-life idiots in real-time and present it as "art"...

Todd Solondz is a very good filmmaker, and it's evident with "Happiness" and "Welcome to the Dollhouse," but this film was something that should never have been made. I'm still perplexed on how a company actually put up money for it...Selma Blair is a super-sexy actress, but in this film, she couldn't have picked a more terrible role...what was she thinking...? The fiction segment was easily the most powerful; yet also the most absurd...whatever Solondz was trying to do failed miserably...I think Solondz should skip this melodramatic sex theme and all these societal issues and make either a porno or horror film. There was no humor in the film, unlike his other efforts, Storytelling was a cheap movie with cheap ideas.

Watching this movie was the biggest waste of 85 minutes in a long time. Now don't get me wrong, I love strange, quirky, quiet little films. I loved "But I'm a Cheerleader" and "Lost in Translation". I almost enjoyed "Dirty Pretty Things", and really liked "Requiem for a Dream". Not the same types of films as this, but it shows I have an open enough mind when it comes to non-mainstream films. But this film was worthless except as a reminder that going to film school and making one good movie like "Welcome to the Dollhouse" (which I enjoyed) doesn't guarantee you can't make a piece of crap later. I seriously kept waiting for the punchline, but all I got was a lame ending that seemed to be trying to teach me something, but wasn't sure what it wanted to say. If the only problem were a confused message, then maybe the message could be its very lack of a message. But unless Solondz was actually trying to express how hard it is to make a decent movie with a message, then he's failed whatever it was he tried to achieve. This movie was so bad that I actually registered on IMDb just to post this review. I'd advise against wasting your time with this unless you need a lesson in what not to do when writing a screenplay.

The writer's best work ("Welcome to the Dollhouse") does a good job exploring the hardships of high school teenagers in the context of American society. This movie was less insightful and the characters are more depraved, so it becomes more of a work of * - not quite as bad as "Kids" or "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover", but under the artsy veneer, it's basically the same voyeuristic crap.

I don't know why audiences tolerate such photography: grimy, grainy, murky, under-exposed, ugly. Yes, it "matches the subject matter", in the same artless way that a shoe shop built in the shape of an enormous shoe matches ITS subject matter, but anyone can see that Solondz, like the architect, is cheating, and short of ideas. He cheats in other ways, too. Perhaps stung by critics in the past, Solondz tries to anticipate every possible criticism one might make of his film and have it voiced by one of the characters IN the film. But he hasn't refuted his critics, merely beaten them to the punch. "Storytelling" IS contrived, unbelievable, mean-spirited, unfocused, misanthropic, racist and ugly; it DOES try to shock us simply for the sake of shocking us; Solondz DOES wallow in his own superiority to his characters; the dialogue IS flat-footed; the craftsmanship IS poor. I'll admit there's some wit and cleverness in the way Solondz weaves every single one of these complaints (and more besides) into the fabric of the film itself, but that's all the wit and cleverness there is; and this doesn't change the fact that the charges are - every single one of them except for the incomprehensible one levelled by Catherine against Vi's story in the first segment of the movie - true. And since they're true, this ought to be the end of the discussion. Yes, Todd, you HAVE made a miserably bad movie.

Another completely original, dark, deeply skewered and audacious commentary on society from Todd S., whom we've come to depend upon for this sort of thing. Not as focused as Dollhouse or as filled-out as Happiness, Storytelling does seem sparse, and that's one of the things I like best about it (I've seen it 4 times now)- how T.S. didn't feel the need to conform to what the majority of film goers (even his OWN crowd!) expect when they enter a theatre. It's divided into two parts - Fiction, with its heavy sexual, presumably-racist and ironic elements, a searing affair that many people seem to have found offensive without getting the underlying satire, and then there's Non-Fiction; amazing how much spot-on societal jabs T. S. squeezes into this one, and plus it has another great, multi-layered performance from Paul Giamatti, always a major selling point of any film, for me. The bottom line: I believe T.S. deserves credit for his audacity alone, his unwillingness to compromise his vision, however unacceptable it might be. Or he might be consciously tailoring his vision toward the unacceptable, sort of like Andy Kaufman did - getting off on just making people react, shaking them out of indifference. Or maybe, like some people have suggested, he's run out of ideas (or he peaked with Dollhouse) and he's just rehashing the same stuff, hoping nobody will notice. Or maybe he WANTS us to notice, maybe it's a cry for help, in which case I would recommend a writing class, but NOT one that has Robert Wisdom as the professor.