The Machine

I don't know much about bert kreisher as a stand up comedian and this seems to be the first film he has stared in. This film is fun and funny at times but its not by burt that makes it funny. Its the scary russian characters that are including mark hamil who can only sound like the joker in my head. In this movie burt and his father are kidnapped by an attractive woman named irina. She wants a watch returned to her that was a family hairloom and she believes burt took it. Back in college he was known as the machine and became involed in the russian mob. Its hard to believe this film is actually based on a true story. But anyway acting was good and this film is decent enough as a crime action movie cut out the sort of comedy and its a pefectly fine film still.

The movie itself was pretty funny for the most part. I would also agree that it was a little slow at times too. Burt performing on-stage is truly authentic and amazingly funny. For a 1st time actor, I thought he did really well. Some have rated this movie with low scores forgetting that this is a stand-up comedian acting in a major motion picture about his life and never experiencing the acting role before. If you hated this movie and decided to post negative remarks and ratings, I cannot relate. I have read some of these negative reviews and it is clear that some people believe that they themselves are Siskle & Ebert themselves. The movie is funny, was it the best comedy I have ever seen NO. But to bash a movie just because it wasn't your cup of tea is an insult to reviews as a whole. When I dislike something, I simply choose to remember the morales my mother and father taught me as a young child. I keep my opinions and negative thoughts to myself. Go see the movie, it's pretty funny.

The first 20-25 minutes are pretty cheesy/over-the-top setting up the motivation for the plot and getting Bert & his dad into position. But it actually gets fairly watchable after Irina shows up. It's by no means going to win any awards, but if you're a fan of BK & enjoyed this story from his set, you'll probably enjoy watching this enough to not shut it off.

I was pretty dubious on how BK was going to be as an actor, but I was pleasantly surprised once the story left LA. It's a testament to the caliber of talent Mark Hamill that he was able to raise whatever abilities BK came to the table with to a place where you actually feel invested during their scenes.

The ending is also surprisingly engaging and fitting.

I'm able to switch my brain off and kinda just waltz thru movies that are at that level so it was a solid 5 stars. It's overproduced for what it is and that's probably why I give it a 5, but it's "The Machine" story being milked for what it is, a good story that, as time goes on, start to feel more like an overinflated teenager's story that loses any sense of credibility at all, that is not a great story after all. It's unfortunately the thing that pushed me to realize that I'm getting a bit tired of Bert's inflated ego and that maybe outside of the machine and his forced high pitch laugh, he doesn't have much else to offer.

Full disclosure, I am russian. Bert is very funny guy and he should stick to comedy. His machine routine was funny enough but it didn't translate well to movie. His story actual story is quite dark, and it goes through very bad time in Russia, but he makes a good humor story of this mess in his standup. Where he makes a funny standup, the movie falls well short of his act. Romanian setting with western actors speaking horrible, bearly understandible Russian, with even worse translation; was the funniest part of the movie for me. Over the top caricature characters can only take movie so far, it needs a good script.