
Years ago, when I applied for a role at a studio, I got a peak into the workings of the place I had only dreamed of as a child. In hindsight, that visit was transformative–being given the opportunity to understand the history of that location, the infinite possibilities I imagined, and the vibrancy of the busy corridors and alleyways filled with people, props, and costumes. And then, my gaze was directed to my interviewer while I was in a sleek boardroom. I her lecture began and I got very anxious. She embarked on a 20-minute speech of how bad saying people’s coffee orders could be and how it would determine the success of my career. After all the excitement, that’s really what this job boiled down to: remembering who got which latte and how quickly you could deliver it into their hand.
Sadly, my interview that involved coffee was more memorable than Charlie Day’s teeth less satire of Hollywood, Fool’s Paradise. Make fun of the biz, like the oddity of bringing coffee to the more powerful members, the fickle figure of the star, and the few faces you come across is a great premise – it gave us ample seasons of “BoJack Horseman.” Even last year, the disillusioned love letter to Tinseltown, Babylon, had a theme to explore.
The artistic touch of Day falls incredibly short in comparison to the new insights that could be provided by highlighting different caricatures of people found in Hollywood. In his attempt to make satire, Day, like many, has forgotten to actually include jokes, and there are few comedies that are able to get away from that sin.
In the newest release “Fool’s Paradise,” Day is seen as a person with no family and no history who, for some odd reason, has been dropped by physicians in the central part of Los Angeles. Fortunately, he managed to capture the attention of an ambitious producer like Ray Liotta, who, in one of his last pieces, labels him Latte Pronto. Contrary to how it may seem, Latte does not utter a single word, instead, engages in childlike behavior, bewildered by the surroundings. Eventually, he is handled by a fast-talking publicist addicted to energy drinks called Ken Jeong. Latte goes on to encounter quite a few multi-layer characters. Like his movie star wife, Christiana Dior, alongside her free-spirited Chad, the bro director Jason Sudeikis, enthusiastic special effects tech Jason Bateman, disloyal agent Edie Falco, and a former action star turned common man.
Being the writer and the director of ‘Fool’s Paradise’ Day manages to flood the screen with his rich list of cameos, and that is the only positive aspect I can promises about it.
In an effort to produce a narrative more riveting than anything he has ever done, Day has gone all-in on making almost every character other than himself grotesquely annoying. For his part, Day adopts a ‘Chaplinesque’ persona dressed as an L.A. jerk who looks like he will claim to have an inn at Magic Castle, but will never take you. But Day profoundly misunderstands the enduring appeal of Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp Character or even his Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd counterparts. The world happens around them, and they react. At some point in their movies, they lay the groundwork for the rest of the world’s physical comedians to jump into action, that is, everything is done in a comedically exaggerated manner. Latte has all of these things happening to him due to his inaction, and as is normal, the most one can expect are some puzzled glances and some eyebrows raised. I am generalizing here, but each of the three prominent silent comedians had a lot to say about the human condition from Chaplin, how technology was changing the world around them courtesy Keaton and the new problems facing the modern man courtesy Lloyd. Day’s film has struck me as amusing indeed, albeit at the same level I found the most amusing thought was “Isn’t Hollywood a funny place”.
Hollywood will always be an easy target for mockery. There are too many comedians working and too serious of a business culture not to be. And because this subject is so close to my own home, it means that many others have had a good laugh already in the industry. Like Woody Allen deriding their still growing number of award shows in Annie Hall or even how the Marion Davies comedy Show People had some fun with the odds characters one meets in entertainment in the 1920s. But Fool’s Paradise sits a bit of a humorless middle ground nestling between Show People and the grimmer Hollywood satire The Day of the Locust, and it does not have anything for that. The absurd caricatures and the jokes of the sorts of ‘don’t you know who I am!’ and ‘going to see his wife’s shaman’ are as wasted as an empty coffee cup and sadly this movie does not have anything else to offer for a refill.
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