(434-word review) At long last: my ultra-extended film hiatus, beginning at the end of October and was supposed to end near the end of December, is over. It's been a minute; I got lazy, not to mention intimidated at the length of films compared to the shorter/easier/easily consumable duration of TV episodes.
So, to get back in the groove of films (and also my first film of 2023), I decided to go with one that's short. And for some reason, I thought of this; well, I thought of Napoleon Dynamite first, then the word 'dynamite' made me remember this. I went with this one, and it was a good choice. It was a shorter film, which I was looking for, so that was a pleasant surprise. I didn't know what to expect; I didn't even attempt to do so. I went straight in.
What came at me was a concoction of epic proportions. Some ingredients were good: the cinematography/editing, a good script/dialogue (particularly the dialogue; so many good one-liners), and a good soundtrack.
It's a fair assumption that most of my enjoyment stemmed from those things; they were very effective, so much so that my rating should be higher, except for one problem: an element of confusion, which presented itself in two ways.
One.) The plot. It was all over the place; hard to follow. While I'm 99% sure it was intentional (to an extent; there may have been a cut scene or two), it's not enjoyable in a 'so-bad-it's-good' way because the film itself is not in that category in the first place. Take The Room, for example: bad, through-and-through, yet in a bad-but-good way. You can't say this film follows that example, and having the plot all over the place drags it down instead.
Two.) The characters, particularly Dynamite's "crew." They felt dangling instead of attached, dangled to different places instead of being grounded in coherence: no proper connection to the film. In a way, this is an extension of the first point. My point is that this sowed more confusion, building upon the same from the erratic plot. Again, this, too, was likely intentional. But for me, it missed the mark.
Unfortunately, those two things dragged the film down a bit. Michael Jai White/Black Dynamite was the undisputed highlight, along with individual scenes; Tommy Davidson/Cream Corn was also a highlight. But aspects like the ones mentioned in the third paragraph, on top of Michael and Tommy's performances, couldn't overcome the impact.
The remaining result was still sufficient/sufficiently enjoyable, only not to the point it could've been.
