3 stars out of 5
Oh, Andy Samberg, what are we going to do with you? You were so funny on Saturday Night Live, and then in 2007 you made Hot Rod, showing it could be trickier to be funny on the big screen. In 2012, I was impressed with Samberg in the fairly serious Celeste & Jesse Forever. But shortly thereafter, it seemed like he had learned his Hollywood lesson and had retreated to the safety and comfort of television on the mildly amusing Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
But now he’s back, with his Lonely Island buddies, in another bid for cinematic success. Maybe they missed each other? Or maybe the got the bug again after the success of their co-write of the “Everything Is Awesome” song for The Lego Movie. We all enjoyed those many SNL Digital Shorts, with the dick in the box, and being on a boat, and what-not, so maybe a movie could work.
Unfortunately, as we’ve learned from lesser films based on SNL characters, it can be difficult to stretch a sketch out to feature length. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that the central joke of the Lonely Island isn’t exactly in my wheelhouse. They — and society at large — are much more enamored of hip-hop than I am. “Beats” are very, very important to them but not at all to me. So maybe I’m not the target audience for this movie. Even so, in the end isn’t it just white guys rapping in a goofy way, which gets a bit tiresome after a while?
All that aside, too many of the jokes here fall flat. And the Lonely Island resort to a strategy that, while effective in their Digital Shorts, just seems lazy here (and not in good “Lazy Sunday” sort of way). It’s what I’ll a “cameo comedy” — they stack the deck with a million appearances by music and comedy stars. Too long between genuine laughs in the screenplay? No problem, here’s Simon Cowell! Look at him! Isn’t that funny? Yawn. I feel like celebrities being interviewed for phony documentaries needs to be temporarily retired as a comedy trope.
The thing is, there really are some good jokes here, just not quite enough of them. Tim Meadows is pretty solid as the music manager, and there’s an inspired bit that he’d been the fourth member of Tony! Toni! Toné! There’s a recurring, spot-on parody of TMZ. There’s also an amusing sequence with Seal that perhaps you’ve seen in the trailers. I laughed out loud at a minor crack involving Jared Leto’s band. And a few of the songs, including one that aired on SNL, are right up there with the Lonely Island’s stronger work.
The movie is watchable and generally well-paced; the Lonely Island are smart, funny guys (who are a little too amused by/obsessed with dick jokes) so they don’t totally botch the proceedings. Apatow has his name on this too, but sadly that doesn’t have the comedy caché it once did. This is yet another film that will be entertaining enough if you catch it on Netflix or cable or a plane, which is where I saw Hot Rod now that I think about it.
Jack Silbert, curator