★
Directed by: #KyleKenyon
Written by: #KyleKenyon
Starring: #NickMandernach, #KaitlynTanimoto, #NinaConcepcion
Oh my God, no! Do we have to? Is it really necessary? Is there any reason that we have to be subjected to this sort of stuff? If you think you have a 'comedy' routine, go try it out in the clubs, in front of a live audience, who'll tell you first hand exactly what you need to hear about just how unfunny you actually are. Stop trying to foist it onto a movie crowd who don't need to hear the incoherent ramblings of your inner monologue. Stop hoodwinking people into joining in on your egotistical delusion that what you have to say is useful, or relevant, or needs to be heard, or is funny. It isn't, it doesn't, it's not.
So, the premise for this skit is that Nick Fotdog (not the worst unfunny name in the piece) is some kind of middle manager in some sort of tech company that's in some kind of financial trouble. The team are all around the table waiting to hear the news and some creative ideas to help them out of the situation they're in but instead get Nick soliloquising about his abs and his lats and his quads. The team, which includes Carlawinda and Jendabelle and Pitters, play the role of the audience with their WTF faces and little asides to each other as they respond to the farce at the head of the table, but much like the audience no-one is laughing.
As Nick runs out of steam he descends into the inevitable breakdown and we learn more about why he may be having such an obvious psychotic break. However, because it is all played for laughs, none of which are forthcoming, there is absolutely zero emotional resonance to anything that is being played out on screen. By the end of the nine minutes we realise that the whole thing has been an exercise in sheer narcissism; not from Fotdog but from writer/director Kyle Kenyon who thinks that it's okay to pen this stuff and then corral a few folk into paying him some money so that he can play out his adolescent dreams on camera.
There may well be a couple of sly winks and nods to the absurdity of modern society, or to certain global tech nerds who have become the media symbols of our age, but frankly none of it is clear and honestly who cares? It's all lost in amongst this bilge of a tirade that anyone unfortunate enough to click on the link to this video is subjected to. It's like Kenyon got high one night and watched SNL then said to himself, 'I can do that' without anyone else stopping him or telling him that he couldn't (or shouldn't).
If there's any saving grace to this short film (and there isn't) it's that the actors are all fully committed to their roles, but seeing as their characters are all bland, boring stereotypes of skit characters we've seen a million times before and better (thank you 30 Rock) it can't lift this nonsense from the Bog Of Eternal Stench where it resides.
Sad. Bad. Avoid.
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