Heavy-handed and righteously self-important, Indie Game: The Movie is not a film for bullies and varsity QBs.
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| MESSAGE |
Are you lonely and feel
dejected? Don’t feel like anyone really
appreciates you? Well then boy, do I
have the movie for you! It’s called Indie Game: The Movie and it’s all
about, well, being yourself!
Ugh, this movie was a bit of a painful
watch. Don’t get me wrong; I liked it. Sort of.
It just had a lot of those… I don’t know, “really?” sort of
moments. Because with documentaries
there’s a bit of a give and take you need to establish with the audience. When you make the traditional fictional movie
that we’re all familiar with, you as the director are granted a lot of leeway because you’re
dictating a narrative, guts and all. As
such, we’re willing to work with you in regards to establishing setting,
developing characters, so on and so forth.
But with a documentary, you’re more of a purveyor; a third party lurking
around eying the goods so you can make that ever so sweet score. So with that being the case, you reeeeeeally
need to give the audience something they can identify with. I mean introducing me to a beautiful woman is
very attention grabbing, but if she’s littered with venereal diseases, what
exactly do you expect me to get out of the situation?
Indie Game feels kind of like
that. I mean yeah, sure, I get that it’s
a tale of creative hardship and identity exploration and that these code guys are the new
wave bohemians of the 2000s and blah blah blah… it’s just all just very…
annoying? I’m not sure if that’s the
right word, but the bottom-line is I could never get over how f*cking irritating
all of the characters were. Maybe it’s
because they were all pasty, poorly facial-haired nerds and I’m a super frat
lord that lifts hella weight, but I could never really get into the whole mindset
of, “Well, I made a pretty irresponsible decision trying to create this game with limited time and resources amongst massive expectations, BUUUUT this is all part of how I
express myself so, yeah, please emphasize with me because isn’t this how
underdog stories are supposed to work??”
Yeah, sorry dude, not happening. You need to bring a biiiiit more to the table in order to get me to give a sh*t about your passion for creating video games.
I know this is probably coming off
as pretty douchey and yeah, I’m hung over, but at the end of day
documentarians are obligated to make their subjects relatable. I mean that’s the real challenge of making a
documentary; bringing a unique subject to the table and coaxing the mainstream
into not only identifying with it but appreciating it for intrinsically
relatable reasons. That’s why I loved Jiro Dreams of Sushi so much. Not because you could identify with Jiro
himself, but that you absolutely could identify with his sons and all those
around him. You could pretty much, like
them, look at Jiro be like, “Wow, considering I'm a career-oriented adult with long-term
goals, this is clearly someone I can aspire to emulate.”
With Indie Game you’re pretty much like, “Okay… so what you’re saying is
that life is difficult? Awesome, thanks
for the insight. Now don’t mind me while
I go back to shoveling sh*t for a living.”
As Leo so succinctly put it in The
Departed, “Are we done here with this psychiatry bullsh*t?”
Grade - C
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