‘What a wild life you live, my friend...’
I’ve written before about how it’s much easier to write about a film that you hate or a film that you love. Something that lands somewhere in the middle is difficult to describe because, by definition, it clearly hasn’t really evoked any kind of strong feelings either way. Humpday is one of those films. It’s fine. I watched it. I enjoyed parts of it (particularly the opening half an hour), but I will probably have forgotten all about it by this time next week. Considering there are sandwiches that I ate in 2009 that I still remember with clarity and fondness, this is quite a damning indictment of Lynn Shelton’s movie…
Ben (Mark Duplass) and Anna (Alycia Delmore) share an uncomplicated and loving marriage until Andrew (Joshua Leonard), stuck in some kind of permanent adolescence, arrives on the scene and shatters their marital bliss. When Ben and Andrew hark back to an old rivalry that results in a dangerous game of one upmanship, it seems the only way for the situation to be resolved is if they make a porno together. It’s never really made clear why.
I have enjoyed some of Lynn Shelton’s other work (she is sadly departed now), but Humpday just feels kinda lazy. Like she came up with a half baked concept and then just ran with it instead of pausing to lock in silly things like a plot, character development or a cohesive message. The sheer quality of the cast carries the opening half an hour, and the character dynamics at the point form the high point of the whole project. The last hour is taken up by three mostly unlikable characters firing off seemingly totally improvised dialogue. To be frank, it’s pretty dull.
The whole concept of mumblecore movies gets a bad press in some quarters, and while I mostly love that whole scene, particularly if Duplass is involved, Humpday is the kind of uninspired navel gazing that the genres detractors can legitimately point to as proof that the whole thing is trash. One for completists only.