muratmihcioglu

The first time I had come across Iliza Schlesinger was on Joe Rogan. During the segment of the talk, I had a hard time figuring out what she was doing for a living, and later, to my surprise, found out she was a stand up comic. I was surprised because nothing about her looked or sounded even remotely funny for the duration of a quite long clip. She hadn't even cracked a few jokes to opportunities even non-coics would. Later I saw a special of hers on Netflix and got really bored. So, as opposed to the bit used in this movie, she was unfuny "even for a woman" in my eyes.

And I sat down to watch this on Netflix yesterday. The general vibe was quite fresh and paced. Despite not truly relating to the character, I never felt the need to speed it up to 1.25x (as I usually do) and got engaged with the story pretty quickly. For the first time, I was finding humor in what Iliza was delivering. Not the kind of life-changing, prophetic truths, but let's say she was "funny for a woman" at the very least. Was this gonna be a condensed version of the great, 3-season-long "Love"?

Though I was put off in a few scenes due to what I find as elements of disgust, I kept watching. It helped that Ryan Hansen, about whom I know nothing, was pretty convincing as to who he was / was not, while looking like an A-lister who could easily pass as Kevin Costner's younger brother or son.

Yes, in the end, Iliza did kinda make it about "being a strong woman who is struggling" or something to that effect, wrapping up the freshness of her little story with an overused sheet, whereas something more interesting and unpredictable could have elevated this little movie.

However, he inside to LA-life from the angle of a hardly-rising female comic was still original enough. Had she made it more about that crucial difference she saw between his and Dennis' characters, and less about "men and women", keeping the spirit of the story more individual and less gender-classy, I could find it in me to root for her louder.

Also, it didn't help that the story ended on a Seinfeld-ish courtroom confrontation. The scene where she and Dennis convered while in the restrooms was pretty good as it also allowed us to get a bit into Dennis' head, but the verdict seemed to come short of how the man was physically treated. Be the victim a total fraud or not, I don't think anyone can (or should) get away with getting people drunk for the purpose of questioning, especially not if they actually do cause bodily harm in the process.

What holds Iliza back is focusing too much on her sex/gender, whatever. This movie proves that she is much better a screenwriter and an actress than a standup comic. Maybe she sould quit trying the "reverse Bill Burr" thing and commit more to writing and directing. The more she focuses on men telling her she is "funny for a woman", the more she will hear it. Because the "geder field" has really become unfunny lately.

I'm not sure it was the first time for me but I watched it yesterday on Amazon Prime. As some scenes struck a nerve I guess I had seen it, at least in part, sometime within the decades, if not during those famous days of VHS. Looking back from today, there are a coupe of things I note:

What bothers me the most with regards to 2020s cinema is that it is extremely overengineered. Every other nation embraced the Hollywood formula and it's only in certain comedies that we can find some fresh improvisation. The story structures are iron clad, making it quite tough to penetrate into the industry for freethinkers, while also leaving the audience with nothing but patterns.

Somwthing Wild is, for the most part, something wild. And it's not just about the 1980s vibe - people being so open to casualty gives you a clue on how come AIDS had that boost. Things run on instinct, which, in this case, is the essence of the movie already. I did enjoy the unpredictability of the characters and the lighter version of Natural Born Killers I found in that vibe. The moment mattered even more than the story, and that made sense when the female lead, who was definitely in charge of what we were seeing, was more into moments than plans.

The surprise was what happened after the high school reuinon. I wasn't expecting such a story to go on to embrace raw violence, even if it did make sense as an inevitable outcome. That young, pre-Goodfellas Ray Liotta was a force of nature on the one hand, but on the other hand, I think his character ruined where else that aive story could have gone.

See? Now, as a viewer, I am overengineering the content instead of allowing the experience to let me sink deep into it... Maybe this was to be watched fresh in 1986, when our minds were more welcoming to whatever filmmakers felt like giving. The mismatch between today's habits and the past's harvest will keep growing, I'm afraid. Even as an admirer of raw, unpredictable cinema, I can judge with structural expectations.

It was interesting also because it gave me to look bettter into how the director of Silence of the Lambs could have constructed his very personal relationship with dark moods and violence, as if he was signaling from where to where he was headed right within this single movie. Also strange that one of the stars. Jeff Daniels, was going to be famous for an even more exaggerated version of humor than his character in this one provided, alongside Jim Carrey.

You should watch this movie. It's a notable example of its era.