Jeremy:
‘Remarkable Power’ is the kind of comedy that you expect to find on a video store shelf with the words “National Lampoon Presents†in front of the title. It’s rarely funny, it feels like the people involved were just making it for a quick buck, and it never really pushes the envelope. It thinks it does. It thinks its subject matter reaches those taboo issues that should go untouched, but it’s not that smart. Sex, murder, and self-help. Those are the topics that serve as the catalysts for entertainment here. Not exactly groundbreaking.
Kevin Nealon stars as Jack West, a late night talk show host whose show has gone the way of Jerry Springer in recent years. So much so, that execs are planning to pull the plug. Throw that in with the fact that West has recently discovered his wife’s infidelity with a player for the LA Dodgers, and you can kind of gauge the week he’s having. West quickly devises a scheme to keep his show and get back at his cheating wife.
On the other side of the story, Evan Peters plays Ross, an LA slacker who sees an ad for the “Remarkable Power†self-help tapes. After buying the tapes and picking up a job as a knife salesman, he gets wrapped up in a story involving porn stars, the Russian Mafia, and a Jewish drug lord.
All of this is watched from a distance by a private eye played by Tom Arnold and a morose webmistress played by Nora Zehetner.
The stories end up converging by the end of the film, and the tight, complete structure the story follows is about the only right thing the film does. The film looks polished but in that way that most straight-to-DVD comedies are, as if the whole film is covered in a glaze of its own self-appreciation.
The humor in ‘Remarkable Power’ is lame, by the numbers, and it doesn’t even seem like the screenwriters were trying. Most of the jokes fall flatter than a can of Diet Pepsi that’s been left open overnight. There are only a few sight gags that really get the comedic juices flowing. One involves a police interrogation and the other involves a torture at a batting cage. Together, they make up about eight minutes of screen time, not exactly a jokes per minute ratio they should have been shooting for.
Instead, Brad Beckner, the co-writer and director, and Scott Sampila, the other co-writer, fill the film with lame attempts at hilarity that might have worked 10 years ago. The whole baseball as a euphemism for sex gag went out with “Who’s on First†, and these guys put it not once but twice in this film. It wasn’t funny the first time. Chances are it’s not gonna be funny later on in the film, either. And, when they can’t seem to think about a joke that might work in a scene, they throw in copious amounts of blood. Sincerely, there are scenes in this film that rival the most graphic of horror films. ‘Saw V’ wishes it had this film’s prosthetic budget.
Nealon is a funny comedian, but he isn’t given much to work with here. He doesn’t seem to be having a fun time in the least bit. He just showed up on set, read his lines, ate some craft services, and collected a paycheck. That goes for most of the cast.
Zehetner and Arnold actually have some chemistry together, but watching them sitting in a van spying on an apartment or a house for 4/5 of their scenes wears on the nerves.
Christopher Titus shows up as the guru behind the “Remarkable Power†tapes, and he seems to be the only one having any fun. Jack Plotnick as Moses, the Jewish gangster, and Bob Sapp as one of his henchmen also seem to be having a fun time on set. That’s probably why the scene at the batting cage with them is one of the better moments in the film.
‘Remarkable Power’ wants to be a fun, roller coaster adventure through a week in the lives of LA denizens. It wants to be a lot of things. What it ends up being is a less than mediocre comedy that not only doesn’t try hard enough, it seems the people behind it didn’t even care of the outcome. Minus a couple of nice visual gags, ‘Remarkable Power’ is not a comedy worth checking out. [Overall: 2 stars out of 5]
Festival Screening Date: Wednesday, November 19 @ 5:00pm + 9:15pm (Tivoli)
