It's a Disaster

The comedy group The Vacationeers has written a different take on end-of-the-world genre. Four couples meet up for a brunch, only to have it disrupted by a massive attack.

Julia Stiles and David Cross are the newly dating couple only on their third date. They're the big names on this film. Erinn Hayes and Blaise Miller are having trouble with their marriage. Rachel Boston and Kevin M. Brennan are the brash sexual couple. Jeff Grace and America Ferrera are unable to get marry even though they are long engaged.

It takes a while to get the lay of the land with all these couple. Once the incident happens, there is a burst of energy and lots of hilarity ensues. Then the story gets uneven with some slow spots and some funny bits.

The one glaring problem is the guys in the group. The members of The Vacationeers are just not up to the caliber of David Cross. Very few people are, and none of those people are in this movie. They don't have the same screen presence. In contrast, all the girls in this movie are top rate. They all bring a little something different to the table.

This movie certainly had its moments. The energy does dissipate somewhat after the chaos of the attack. So it ends up as a good film that could have been great.

I was surfing through Netflix, where this movie has a nearly 5-star rating, and watched because of that (very few Netflix movies rank that high). I didn't even read the preview.

I figured it was a comedy because David Cross is in it, but he seemed at first to be playing such a straight role that I thought this was a drama. It ALMOST lost me until the moment the characters learned they were all about to die, at which point I couldn't stop laughing!

It begins with several couples talking about inane and stupid things, much like an episode of Seinfeld. Just go with it because your reward is to come.

It's as if Jerry, Elaine, George, Newman and Kramer are facing the end of the world, joined by Elaine's new boyfriend, David Cross. These characters all face death with the same focus on petty minutiae in their final hours as the Seinfeld cast would. It's hilarious!

I quite enjoyed this movie. Usually a end-of-the-world-movie involves lots of explosions but this movie took a whole different view on it.

The plot was genius: put a bunch of friends together, add a new person and make the world end. Taking place in a single house was a real nice idea, the mystery of not knowing what was going on outside really helped the plot.

The interactions the characters had in this film where funny, crazy and believable. Though its not a comedy where you are laughing all the time I found myself laughing more than in most big comedies.

Top notch acting really added to the experience. You normally don't expect such a cast in a low budget movie.

I came to watch this movie because I'm a David Cross fan and it's the type of premise that appealed to me. I thought it did a great job of depicting the disaster w/out spending a lot of money. Special effects budget was probably somewhere around 200 bucks. It's structured similar to that Jodie Foster/John C. Reilly movie that came out recently, i.e. a couples get-together. Very funny but a lot of it might go over peoples heads if they're into more obvious comedies. It's starts easy, paced well throughout and had a great ending. A really good ending. I really want to mention my favorite parts but I wouldn't want to give any kind of spoiler. David Cross is a good barometer for whether or not you'd enjoy this. If you've heard his stand-up anyways. Watch it, and if you didn't like it, sorry. Just go watch Big Momma's House again and bask in your impeccable taste for comedy and superior intellect. Ciao homies.

At times It's a Disaster is a bit hard to stay with, because essentially it is a film that focuses on the 'friends' who are together at one of their periodic 'couple's brunch'. While gossipy asides and barely concealed relationship tensions are present as normal, this particular brunch is marked out by some form of major attack on the US occurring as they sit to their meal. While responding to this is now on the agenda, what that means is different for each person, and of course the former business of the meal also still remains.

Recently I watched the sci-fi film Coherence, where the drama is all played out more or less in one house on one night. This film takes a similar approach and, although there is not really any other connection between the two films, it is interesting to see how the same basic location and ensemble structure can be used to support two such very different films. In this case the focus is the black comedy of the situation and although it is never as smart or as funny as one would have liked, it is consistently amusing in its acerbic characters and extreme background. The writing is a bit broad and it is no real surprise when infidelities and other such secrets emerge from within the group, but mostly it has a solid degree of truth about it all. The downside of this is that the characters are not particularly likable, so while elements of them are recognizable and amusing to observe, there is a lot about them which grate – which is part of the satire, but also a side effect.

The performances are mixed. Cross plays the straight man of the group really well and also allows a character for the viewer to follow, since he is new to the group; Stiles and Ferrera are also both reliable. For the others it was variable but not as memorable as these three. The writing is part of the limit on them, since it is broad across the group, with simpler characters rather than fleshed out ones. Filming around the one set of rooms is well done, and I liked the repeated external shot of the house – and that we never see more of the outside world than this. As a while, the film is too broad to really be brilliant, and it never skewers its characters as it should, or produces great laughs, or something deeper. It works for what it does, but I can understand the mixed response to it, because it is only okay rather than brilliant.