A good movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this movie but, since it seemed to have a solid reputation (Roger Ebert apparently really loved the damned thing), I was quite eager to check it out. Well, eventually, it took me quite some time to finally get my hands on this movie, maybe around a decade, but it was definitely worth the wait though. To be honest, I can’t say I was a huge fan but I certainly did appreciate how original this movie was, that’s for sure. Basically, it was one of the most minimalistic movies I have seen, as it was literally about 2 guys sitting in a restaurant and having a conversation for roughly 2 hrs and that was it, the movie had nothing else to offer (to be honest, even if $475,000 was not much, it did sound like a lot of money for such a seemingly simple movie). In my case, I really loved the concept and I thought that Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn were both fascinating. A common misconception was that, since they both played characters with their own names and actually really had such conversations in real life, many viewers assumed that they were playing themselves but it was actually not the case. Anyway, the end-result was just so intriguing. Unfortunately, even though I loved the concept and even though both men were really interesting, well, I’m afraid their conversation didn’t turn out to be so fascinating after all though. I mean, it was always interesting, that’s for sure, but I never felt it was really fascinating. I also thought that Wallace Shawn was so passive for such a long time and I wish they would have been more back-and-forth between the two men (it did happen but only towards the 3rd act and I believed it was the best part of the movie). As a result, I kept listening to Andre Gregory’s wild experiences he had during his extended hiatus and the guy did a lot, I have to admit that I have probably missed some of it, but the bottom line was that it never really dazzled me. In my opinion, the guy pretty much had some kind of middle-life crisis and tried to figure out who he actually was. As far as I was concerned, I leaned more towards Wallace Shawn’s way of thinking but I also believe that you should experience as many different things as possible if you want to be able to appreciate the simple things in your life. Eventually, it was the main interesting aspect of this movie, to hear both men debating about what is basically the meaning of life and, in my opinion, it was more interesting than hearing Gregory telling in details his weird experiments. Anyway, to conclude, even if it didn’t completely blow me away, it was still a really interesting movie and it is definitely worth a look.