7/23/18 - Sorry To Bother You (2018) - 5-7+/10, so I will split the difference and say 6/10

One of the most chaotically divisive and thoughtfully resonant films I have seen in a while. I could not decipher its critical puzzle. But, here I try… The woke version of Southland Tales mutated with Get Out DNA and a High Rise education. Certainly a horse of a different color that isn’t afraid to buck conventions or expectations (inside joke for all who have seen the film). Still, it yin and yang pulls between rolling in the filth of those conventions and pushing through their muck to a weird world of complete uniqueness. There was much of it I really liked, like the gonzo nature so crucial to its aims, but it was that same attitude and flourishes that wore on me or just never connected. I constantly felt that it held me at arms length as it spun in its own circle, enjoying itself but not there for me to join in. It was a fun watch and excels in its artistic embellishments and venomous satire, but this bucking bronco was a little too feisty and unwieldy to ride off into the sunset with for me.

The satire and set-up is so natural and contemporaneous with our greater social experience that it is hard not to appreciate. That said, it was much of the connective tissue and idiosyncratic ornaments of this larger story that grabbed me. Such wonderful toys Riley played with...Danny Glover and his surprisingly vital role. Where David Cross and Patton Oswalt fit in. The Robocopian television. Radio Rakim made manifest on ... ears. The crucial insertion of the most obscure as possible snippet of The Last Dragon. It mashes down on the nostalgia/inside joke joy button like a kid in an arcade.

In the film’s last act it jumps right over poking fun and goes full-on street corner Cronenburg bizarrity mocking “horseplay”. Maybe the hardest left turn in a film for a long time. This movie doesn’t mind ramping up the verbosity and insanity of their ludicrousness. The tongue has gone through the cheek and is beginning to curl around the throat, like the tail of an Alien facehugger. Punches certainly aren’t pulled, but I am not quite sure they are always landing.

I think this movie is both brilliant and daft. So devilishly witty and throat tearing satire, but the edges are rough and the construction uneven. I think it is more of a hit than a miss, overall, and deserves praise for what it accomplishes rather than scorn for its failures. What it lacks in elegance it steps up to with societal shame, but I have to ask: is the trade even?