Self Reliance (2023)

[Famous Mortimer]

Jake Johnson off of New Girl wrote, directed and starred in this. Johnson's kind of a sad sack, but not really that bad, just a guy in his late 30s drifting through life a few years after a break-up. One day, Andy Samberg (playing Andy Samberg) pulls up in a limo and tells him he's been picked for a dark web game show.

He agrees, and goes to meet a couple of European guys who explain he's got to survive for 30 days while assassins are trying to kill him. The one rule is that if he's with someone else, the assassins have to leave him alone; eventually, after his family think he's crazy, he hires a friendly homeless guy to be his shadow. Then Anna Kendrick, who also claims to be being hunted, comes into his life.

This is all in the trailer, pretty much, so I don't think I'm giving much away. No matter what happens in the plot (which I'll try not to give away) it can be seen as a metaphor for getting out there and making human connections, having difficult but rewarding confrontations, and in that way it's rather a sweet story.

It is, oddly, very low-stakes, and I'm not sure the plot makes enough sense to really work, outside of what you take from a reading of it. And, Jake Johnson appears to be part of that group of comedians and comedy actors who seem slightly embarrassed at their ability to make people laugh and want to make their stuff a bit weightier, without having a corresponding amount of talent in that area.

It's out there to stream, is pretty fun, and is done in 90 minutes. It's not bad, but it's not great. I hope Johnson gets to direct more, though, as I liked the look of it. Thumbs very slightly up?

[Peabo Bryson Is Not Dead]

I liked it, it was breezy.

The idea sets up like a mad dystopian thriller, but they played it for gentle laughs in the end. Found the writing to be rather one-note, there were no differing voices. The fact that it could have all been mental illness until the very last cameo was nice.

I think the tone and story they were trying to ape was like The Jerk or Brewster's Millions but it's ok to aim high.

Johnson has showed he can competently direct and with the tightest of budget. I can't see filming taking more than 3 weeks for this, if that.

Kudos to hulu for showing this.

[Mister Six]

For most of the running time I felt nothing about this film. Not in a bad way, or in a good way, or in any way at all. I didn't laugh once, but I also didn't grimace. I wasn't bored, but I wasn't particularly intrigued either. It was like wallowing in a big pool of tepid water.

Then towards the end they started leaning a bit more heavily on the "Is it mental illness?" angle, and I started to wonder if the blandness was deliberate, and it was going to segue into a really weird and dark film. But no, it stuck to its boring path and copped out (unlike Peabo, I don't think we're supposed to think that the cameo appearance is definitely happening in reality) in a disappointing way dropping it from a flat 2.5/5 to a slightly underperforming 2/5.