"Never Been Thawed" is an odd little mockumentary about frozen entrée collectors. Oh, and it's also about the Phoenix-area Christian music scene. And clowns who cut hair. And an anti-abortion themed coffeehouse. And gay firefighters. And a corporate retreat that simulates the experience of a Vietcong prison camp. And it's not worth remembering.
Never before has a movie that clocks in at 85 minutes seemed so overstuffed. Every scene of this movie is jam-packed with absurdist characters and situations. Unfortunately, more is not necessarily better. Too much is going on in this movie, which prevents any real audience connection from developing. There are some funny ideas lurking beneath the surface, but they get lost in a sea of excess.
The press material for the film touts it as a nerd-power comedy in the mold of "Napoleon Dynamite." In reality, first-time director Sean Anders appears to draw much of his inspiration from the faux-documentaries of Christopher Guest. Everything, from the format (which, by this point, is feeling a little tired) to the quirky characters, feels lifted from other, better movies. Unfortunately, Anders forgets what makes Guest's movies so endearing: we actually care about the characters.
The characters in "Never Been Thawed" are too loosely defined and one-dimensional to ever resonate. They are constructs of the plot, existing only to be laughed at. They lack heart and soul. There is nobody like Mitch and Mickey in "A Mighty Wind" or Dr. Allan Pearl in "Waiting for Guffman" who can lend any kind of emotional weight to what happens in this movie. In short, there is nobody you can care about. Anders makes the mistake typical of young directors: he thinks that over-the-top situations make a great comedy. This approach, which is really not all that uncommon, has doomed movies from directors more experienced than Sean Anders. Truly great comedy arises when characters we really care about find themselves in embarrassing situations. That's it — that's the basic blueprint for making a funny movie. Stick to this basic rule and you'll have a successful comedy. It's what made the "American Pie" movies such a success with audiences and critics alike. It's the reason "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" is still cleaning up at the box office. It's also the reason "Never Been Thawed" is doomed to mediocrity.
Director Sean Anders obviously wants his movie to make a big splash, which is admirable in an era when most directors have relatively meager ambitions. Anders doesn't just want his movie to be funny: he wants it to be hilarious. This is what causes his movie to fail.
Comedy is probably the hardest of all movie genres to direct. The director has to have unwavering focus and discipline in order to make a comedy that truly works. Even the slightest slow spot can spell doom. Don't believe me? Look at the last 30 minutes of "Wedding Crashers" and you'll see how quickly a funny movie can go downhill if the director gets off the reservation. Sean Anders loads his movie up with extraneous characters, musical numbers and set pieces that go absolutely nowhere. Some of them may be funny (most notably the inexplicable, but hilarious, POW Corporate Retreat sequence, which could have been the greatest SNL sketch of all time) but one wonders why they even exist. It's all utterly pointless.
Making a comedy is a lot like calling plays for a football team. In football, you can't throw up a Hail Mary every time, unless of course you're Steve Spurrier coaching the Redskins. You have to set up the big play with some screens and running plays. Then, when the defense is least expecting it, you go long. The same thing holds true when making a comedy: you can't go for the big laugh on every joke. You need some smaller bits to get the audience warmed up.
Example: "There's Something About Mary" was probably the most brilliantly constructed comedy of the 1990s. "There's Something About Mary" is built around three scenes that are the cinematic equivalent of Hail Marys: the zipper scene, the hair-gel scene and the drugged dog scene, all evenly spaced out throughout the movie. The Farrelly brothers score touchdowns on all three scenes. Why? Because they do the two basic things that most comedy directors forget: they create characters we care about and they pick the spots to go for a big laugh.
You can accuse the Farrellys' movies of being crude and tasteless, but you can never say that they have contempt for their characters. Watching "Never Been Thawed," I got the distinct feeling that Sean Anders really didn't care that much for the characters he was filming. There is a distinct mean streak that runs through the movie. I got the sense Sean Anders was much more interested in mocking his characters than actually delving into their lonely, fragile psyches. If you don't love (or at least respect) your characters, you shouldn't be making the movie. It's that simple.
The Farrelly brothers also set up the aforementioned "big play" scenes with a number of smaller scenes. They realize that you don't need a big laugh every time out. Sometimes, a smile or a chuckle works just as well. This is the cinematic equivalent of a five-yard draw up the middle. Sean Anders doesn't realize the need for this. He is working under the misguided assumption that if the audience isn't always rolling in the aisles, the movie must not be working.
Sean Anders probably has a good movie in him, but alas, "Never Been Thawed" is not it. While this project shows that he has creativity and ambition to spare, audiences are always aware of just how hard he is working for his laughs. The best comedies look totally effortless. Watching "Never Been Thawed," one is struck by how much thought and energy went into a movie that is, in the end, so stunningly average.
Grade: D
