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EASY DOES IT
Director: Will Addison Cast: Ben Matheny, Matthew Paul Martinez, Cory Dumesnil, Susan Gordon, Linda Hamilton, Bryan Batt, Dwight Henry, the voices of John Goodman, Harry Shearer MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:37 Release Date: 7/17/20 (limited; digital & on-demand) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 16, 2020 If the main characters of Easy Does It were charming or funny or likeable in any kind of way, the movie's blend of eccentric humor, 1970s pastiche, and dunderheaded criminality might have had a better chance. They're not, so it doesn't. The leads are also just the start of this too-precious movie's problems. Instead, the movie, about a pair of friends who travel and commit armed robbery across the Southern United States, is a messy and awkward affair. It's meant to be a comedy, although neither the characters nor the gags are particularly amusing, and it also wants us to takes it seriously at times. Whether co-writer/director Will Addison tries to gravely consider some of the violence and these characters' stories or to make a statement about the promise and elusiveness of the American Dream, there's always another joke just around the corner or down the road, waiting to undermine the point. The friends are Jack (Ben Matheny) and Scottie (Matthew Paul Martinez), a pair of two-bit hustlers in a small, Mississippi town. They're failures from the start (trying to swindle some homeless people for dollar bills but forgetting to take the money before escaping), so when Jack receives a postcard from his mother, informing him of her death and the location of some buried gold coins in California, the two decide to leave town for unknown riches. They are, though, in debt to local crime lord King George (Linda Hamilton, sporting a constant snarl and cornrows). The King, hearing the small-town gossip about Jack's inheritance, sends her right-hand thug/daughter Blue (Susan Gordon) to hunt them. The central plot has the irritating Jack and Scottie robbing gas stations and diners to fund their trip. To help, they use Collin (Cory Dumesnil), a mousy man they take as a hostage during their first robbery, as an unwilling stooge/hostage for the rest of their crimes. Addison goes overboard on the quirkiness—highlighting character and camera movements with whooshing sound effects, ensuring that every performance is as broad a caricature as possible, and implementing multiple aesthetic tricks (grainy and scratchy film stock, tinting, and even the now-outdated burns in the frame's corner) to imitate the look of a movie from the period. The technical aspects of this masquerade are fine, but they also emphasize how affected and hollow the whole of Easy Does It is. Copyright © 2020 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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