Saw Haiku Tunnel.
Occasionally funny.
A disappointment.
Overall I found Haiku Tunnel to be an overwhelmingly mediocre film. There are some scattered humorous moments, but for the most part it feels like the film was created by the “funny” guy at your office, the one who thinks he’s much funnier than he actually is and only occasionally comes up with something surprisingly humorous to say. In fact there’s a lot about Haiku Tunnel that reminds me about working in an office. For one, the whole thing is rather tedious and sometimes frustrating; the people you see aren’t particularly photogenic or interesting and you find yourself frequently glancing up at the clock, counting down until it’s over and you can go do something fun instead.
Want proof of how tedious this movie can be? The big climactic scene at the end shows the unappealing lead character slowly licking envelopes closed one by one as an elderly man gradually pushes a mail cart towards his desk. Wheee!
Want proof of how unappealing the lead character is? Remember the “funny” guy at the office I mentioned earlier? Picture him looking like--and Sombrero Grande is not trying to be mean here--Danny DeVito ate Weird Al Yankovic. Writer/director/star Josh Kornbluth looks like a funny monologue artist, or maybe a neurotic software engineer, but not a movie star. His eyes often bulge out while addressing the audience and I can’t really remember him blinking. Now, Sombrero Grande isn’t saying he demands every leading man must look like Orlando Bloom, but come on. There’s one scene in particular where Josh is illuminated from below by the green lights of a printer that I almost couldn’t watch because the way the light contorted his round face he looked like a scary version of the moon in A Trip to the Moon.
The story follows Josh--playing himself even though at the start of the film he makes a purposefully lame attempt to assert that he’s playing a fictional “Josh”--an office temp who loves temping (or does he? Seriously, I’m not sure) who is offered a “perm” position his first day at a new office. Josh says he’s an extremely efficient temp, but as soon as he is brought onto the staff full-time, Josh looses all his steam and the only thing he does “full-time” is goof off and work on his novel. What I had a hard time swallowing was WHY he was offered a full-time position after he hadn’t even been working at the office for a full day yet. Yeah, he was very productive that first day, but this was supposed to be a commentary on real-life workplaces and this plot point did not seem very grounded in reality to me.
.jpg?t=20120527181101)
Article comments