Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
an overlooked gem of a movie, August 7, 2005
Although not a masterpiece, I gave 5 stars for its great dialogue, good acting, well planned storyline that holds up with repeated viewings and the fact that this movie stayed with me. This movie is a dark "in your face" comedy with well defined yet way out there characters. I know other reviewers have provided a synopsis but here's mine: basically it's a story of a man, David Walsh, on the fringe of society who attempts to live the American Dream (good job, nice house, beautiful wife, etc.) and manages to actually live it for a while until a corporate weasel steps in and subsequent decisions made by David seal his fate. For me, this quirky film is one that defines the appeal of the independent genre. No quarter was given on ANY issue and Lions Gate Entertainment studio deserves credit for having guts to put this movie out there. No politically correct jokes found here......or situations for that matter. There is so much offensive behavior to be found that it would take up too much space to list it all and yet that is kind of one of the points of this movie. You almost feel guilty for laughing out loud at certain spots. I can certainly see why this film did not do well at the box office, no on would want to admit in public that certain dialogues or scenes while being offensive were also funny. Yes, there are gay, anti-woman and other the comments made but nothing is relayed with malice, just realism with a twist of dark comedy. Yet to say that this movie is just a dark comedy is to miss the underlying seriousness of the script, which is intelligent by the way. Social commentary is brilliantly interwoven in some very disturbing ways. The themes of the American Dream being just that, a dream and not realistic; people being really worse then what you think (we see David's friend while pretending to be a Coroner, steal from the recently departed at an accident scene and then we learn that the real Coroner is not only a party to this offensive behavior but invades peoples privacy at their death bed by taking photos of them and holding gambling death pools, and I won't even go into the further atrocities committed); past behavior/karma has a way of catching up to you; Corporate America is not something to aspire to; and, that you can change before its too late are all there. Any now a word about violent content - HIGH. In certain scenes violence is expected but delivered in unexpected ways. To sum up, if you are easily offended or violence upsets you, this is a movie you need to pass on. If you are tired of watching the same old movies and want to try something different then "Employee of the Month" is the one to grab. The director and co-writer (Mitch Rouse) presents a highly polished gem of a movie that breaks barriers with its own unique style. Yes, this movie did remind one of the Coen Brothers but it never imitated just paid homage. This is a movie that should be seen as long as you know what you are getting into.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Twisted With Great Reasons!, April 18, 2005
There are reasons some films don't last at the box office, but this one is a guilty pleasure. Mitch Rouse wrote and directed this little gem and I wonder if he is related to the Coen Brothers. To be honest, Steve Zahn was the reason I saw this film and I was not disappointed. His manic misbehavior as a thieving, twisted coroner was a delight. He was more of his character than ever in the past. Matt Dillon was his typical `conning' self and Christina Applegate is, well, an excellent actress with no high star power. However, the real star of this film is the script. Initially, the story seems to be an ordinary tale of mismatched lovers with secrets. What drives it over the top is the slow revelations about secret pasts among all the cast. The last twenty minutes are a barrage to the senses. The last five minutes will knock your sneakers off. In some cases in the film; quite literally.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How did we miss this?, February 11, 2006
Where on Earth was I when this film came out? Wherever I happened to be at the time, it was the wrong place.
I picked up this movie used because my local video store had a buy two/get one sale going on, and it looked all right. It had actors that I liked, a plot outline that looked like it was ripe for the funny, and the words "dark comedy" in its synopsis. Why not? I was gettin' it for free anyway. If I didn't like it, I could trade it in later, right?
After actually sitting down to watch it, I think I'd tear a limb off of anybody that suggested I do such a thing now. It surprises, and even kind of appalls me that nobody I know has ever heard of this movie, and that those who have seen it usually have the same story that I do about finding it.
The comedy in this film is all adult, and it's delivered in several ways so that nothing ever gets stagnant. The style of the movie is continually changing as well, and with good reason. The flick turns out to have some nice surprises at the end, and all the odd moments of cinematography and disjointed plot that occur throughout the film keep the audience just confused enough not to know what exactly the film is heading toward. Through it all, though, the humor keeps things together and keeps this from being some psuedo-artsy slice of crap that just confuses the common moviegoer.
I'd love to give more specifics about the acting and the story, but it would just give things away that should not be. Go out and look around. I guarantee whevever you find this movie it will be cheap, and it will be worth your time...unless you're easily offended. But then, if you've made it far enough to both find this movie and read its reviews, I doubt that's the case.
Oh, and on one final note, this DVD is a single layer, 4.7 gigabyte copy, which is to say that it has half of the space to store video and sound that most commercially distributed DVDs have, but despite that, it had a crystal clear picture (though it's not as though I was watching it on an HD screen or anything) and the sound made better use of my stereo system than anything I've watched in a long, long time. Some technicians LOVED this movie and it shows in the quality that they put into this digital transfer.
What more can I say. Get it if you can.
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