The Independent Review
by Harvey S. Karten (film_critic AT compuserve DOT com)October 30th, 2001
THE INDEPENDENT
Reviewed by Harvey Karten
Arrow Entertainment
Director: Stephen Kessler
Writer: Stephen Kessler, Mike Wilkins
Cast: Jerry Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Max Perlich, Ginger Lynn Allen, Billy Burke, Andy Dick, Fred Dryer, Anne Meara, Ben Stiller, Karen Black, Peter Bogdanovich
Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 10/29/01
Your friend tells you he has two free tickets for a new movie. He wants the name of the picture to be a surprise but gives you the clue that it's either a blockbuster or an indie. You agree to go with him. Are you hoping that the surprise film is a)a commercial, Hollywood offering, or b) an indie?
You chose (b)? Right answer. Independent movies are those not financed by major Hollywood studios. The rationale is that the big ones have to cater to the broadest possible audience and that therefore a smart guy like you would prefer to be challenged by one which is made on a lower budget, does not depend on huge box office figures, and therefore can appeal to a smaller, hipper crowd.
Ah but wait. There are indies and there are indies. On the one hand small studios produce such gems as Jon Dichter's "The Operator," financed by Black Wolf Productions, which deals with a guy who gets angry at the telephone operator and pays the consequences; and Dan Cohen's "Diamond Men," financed by
DMC Films, about an aging diamond salesman about to be fired who is training his successor. Both lasted all of two weeks in Manhattan's art houses, which tells you something of the fragility of such productions. On the other hand you've got the works of such illustrious directors as Ed Wood ("Glen or Glenda?" "I Changed my Sex" and the worst movie of all-time, "Plan 9 from Outer Space") and Roger Corman, who is one of the most prolific filmmakers ever with such gems as "Big Bad Mama," "Eat My Dust!" and "Rock 'n' Roll High School." "The Independent" is about the latter type of director, fittingly enough helmed by Stephen Kessler, whose "National Lampoon's Vegas Vacation" is a cross between Henry Jaglom's 1981 bomb "National Lampoon Goes to the Movies" (a parody of the movies dealing with soaps, disaster flicks and personal growth films) and Kelly Makim's 1995 "National Lampoon's Senior Trip" (featuring dopers, dropouts and other lowlifes but which had quite a few more genuine laughs than the aforementioned).
Kessler's "The Independent" sends up principally the exploitation drama, defined as those movies which are made with little attention to quality or artistic merit but with an eye to quick profit and emphasizing the sensational, the erotic and the lurid. "The Independent" focuses on a father-daughter team, Morty Fineman (Jerry Stiller) and Paloma Fineman (Janeane Garofalo) who together with promoter Ivan (Max Perlich) have made 427 films in the past three decades, none of which you'd want to show to your young children or your aunt Rose. Kessler's film about Fineman, which he co-wrote with Mike Wilkins, deals with the man's current attempts to raise money to make additional turkeys, which he hopes to do by getting one of the hundred or so film festivals to book his stuff. He is shown with bankers who want to buy his entire film library for eight dollars a pound, with Mayor Kitty Storm (Ginger Lynn Allen) whose Nevada backwater town has actually agreed to sponsor his work at its own film festival (never mind that this desert area, which has one of the country's few legalized houses of prostitution, is called "Blowjob Nevada") and with a host of prospective subjects and promoters including serial killer William Henry Ellis (Larry Hankin) who is available as a subject for Fineman's next drama--which is to be a musical about a man who has wasted sixty-three innocent people.
Kessler intercuts between Morty Fineman's attempts to make new movies and to get backing and Fineman's previous exploitation films including "Teenie Weenie Bikini Beach" (featuring frolicking freakish types on the west coast sands), "World War III II" (which profits from American movie-makers' fascination with sequels), and best of all, the pic that frames the 85-minute work featuring the scantily clad Ms Kervorkian who is about to machine-gun a dying man in the hospital only to be confronted by some right-to-lifers, also well armed, who argue for his natural death.
"The Independent" is amusing at times, not really the laugh- out-loud sort of comedy which I think Kessler intended it to be, its weakness being that the film itself is done in the intentionally amateurish style of the clips that the director shows as an all-out parody. Jerry Stiller, who people of a certain age may remember most for his radio commercials with his real-life wife Anne Meara (who has a lame role in this film as well), looks uneasy in a role that seems means more like his "Zoolander" son Ben Stiller (here shown in a cameo that does little to exploit his talent). The film perks up each time the hilarious Janeane Garofalo, performing in the role of Fineman's daughter Paloma, appears, but then again Ms. Garofalo can recite the phone book of Blowjob, Nevada, and get the attention of the audience. (She was last seen in David Wain's underappreciated "Wet Hot American Summer," a spoof
of summer-camp pics which unlike this current release evokes near-explosive laughter.)
As Paloma, Garofalo--who appeared at New York's Caroline's (standup) Comedy Corner in November 2001--is able to save her dad's company. She does her best to rescue the mostly inert "Independent" which despite even the good work of Max Perlich is probably about as compelling as Morty Fineman's 1976 "Wind and Rain and Wet Tshirts."
Not Rated. Running time: 95 minutes. (C) 2001 by
Harvey Karten, [email protected]
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
