Mr. Accident review by The Grim Ringler
It’s a dramatic understatement to say that it’s hard for a foreign personality – actor/director/writer etc. – to make it in Hollywood. Sure, there are plenty of success storirs – Schwarzenegger being the most famous of the actors I would wager – but not everyone makes it. Enter director, writer, actor, and all around do-it-your-selfer Yahoo Serious, an Aussie who seems to have been a product of too much ambition and not enough talent. Having directed, acted, and written, three films, each one getting less and less attention, Mr. Serious has sadly become nothing more than a trivia question. And it’s a shame, for while I may not like Mr. Accident; I can say quite honestly that I wish more of Hollywood had his enthusiasm for what he’s doing.
Mr. Accident is the story of a happy-go-lucky guy who has the misfortune of being terribly clumsy. No matter what it is – be it getting ready for work in the morning to going to dinner with a beautiful girl, he’ll find some way to bollocks things up. Despite what many would consider a pretty bad run of luck, he is still a very happy man, content to work as a hapless janitor in an egg factory, to dote on his pet fish, and to ply the trade of his family in a small way – that is to take things apart. Forced at a young age to give up on dreaming and imagination, Roger (Yahoo Serious) settles with the bliss of the every day. All of this changes though with the mysterious disappearance of the egg factory’s owner and his abdication of his egg empire, his sadistic brother taking charge of things and promising lots of change. And suddenly Roger’s life is turned upside-down. A beautiful young woman, mistaking Roger’s apartment for that of her friend, barges into his home accusing him of being an intruder and Roger is in love. Displaying the same sort of unique ideals and view of the world that he does, Roger decides that no matter what, he has to win over this woman, whatever it takes. What Roger doesn’t know though is that Sunday, the object of his affections, is also the recent ex-girlfriend of his new boss, who wants nothing more than to get her back – presumably because she never came back after she left him. And before long Roger must figure a way to win over Sunday, escape her homicidal ex, and finally discover what it is he is meant to do with his life – if he can keep from screwing everything up that is.
While I would never say this is a bad film, this isn’t a good one either. Mr. Serious and the strangely alluring lead actress are the two bright spots here as they have far more charm than the rest of the film does. Set up as a series of physical gags, the thin story and mediocre script don’t really do the film a great service. Some of the gags are very clever and very funny, but generally, this is all stuff we’ve seen before. A long time ago. The heck of it is that Mr. Serious is a throwback – he seems to want to take physical comedy back to the early days of Chaplin and Keaton and unfortunately for him, modern audiences prefer their physical comedy to be a bit more crude and base. Were Mr. Serious to try to make family films he might have a better go of it, but by judging from this film, he prefers to push the envelope into the realm of ‘naughty’, in the silly and teasing way of a lot of British comedy, and that just doesn’t work for most American movie fans today. Which is not to say he doesn’t have his fans. Yahoo Serious has a very definite charm about him and really does endear you to his buffoonish character of Roger. My suggestion to him would be to focus on one thing at a time. Direct a film. Act in a film. But maybe don’t do both. By doing both he stretches himself too thin and lessens the impact of the film. He might also be smart to pull together some very eclectic actors and scripts if he wants to continue to make this brand of oddball comedy. It can work, but I don’t know that it will ever be the sort of stuff that will be popular among the masses.
This IS available on DVD, though there isn’t anything save a clean widescreen transfer here, but in the case of this movie and filmmaker, sadly, this might be the best you can hope for. Yahoo Serious has gotten a pretty bad rap, unfairly I might add, as a bad filmmaker and an untalented oddball but that really is nothing more than a matter of ill educated movie fans judging a man by his look and not his films. Because if you try to tell me that most of the likes of the Saturday Night Live crew that have been making movie recently are more talented than Yahoo Serious then you my friend need to take another look. At worst he’s clinging too tightly to the past as a filmmaker, but hell, I gotta say I prefer that to the gross out tactics of many of today’s ‘hit’ comedies. I hope Mr. Serious gets a second chance and uses it well.
…c…
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