User reviews

An exploration through the dark side of entertainment. A feverish introspective nightmare of a character who remains more mysterious by the end of the film than at the beginning. Entertainment drags us along on a slow road trip through the desert with a comedian who loses his self along the way. The line between reality and dreams become completely blurred. The whole film seems like an inside joke the filmmakers refuse to let us in on. Sure, there are funny moments, especially during the first half, but by the end you'll be left with more questions than answers.

It's emotionally heavy, bizarre, heart-breaking, surreal and even somewhat disturbing. What is truly masterful is how, without ever fully understanding who this character is, the film causes us to lose our sense of reality with him. He is explored, with great depth, inwardly without us ever sure of who he is on the outside. Rick Alverson has perfectly re-created the dream logic story telling techniques and beautifully strange cinematography of a David Lynch film. Yet, he does this using his own voice, which is strikingly original. Entertainment is somewhere between a broken character study, an absurdist comedy and modern tragedy.

Entertainment is not for everyone and if you try using your brain while watching it, you may give yourself a migraine. If you try to use your heart to feel your way through, you won't be sure where to put it and may feel depressed afterwards. This film is a trip that you have to allow to wash over you. Let yourself get lost in it's wonderful visuals and be sure to have friends to discuss it with afterwards.

A fascinating and ambitious mess, with echoes of David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch and Stanley Kubrick among others. Beautifully shot and full of careful and striking lighting and compositions, this tragic-comic character study of an abrasive, sad, utterly unsuccessful stand up comic has a number of surreal scenes and images that are deeply affecting and/or quite funny.

There are also a number of scenes that seem needlessly repetitive, or working way too hard to be self-consciously weird. And the film definitely feels long.

Back on the plus side, it's made more complex and interesting by the fact that the stand up character in his off-stage real life is outwardly nothing like the hyper-annoying, aggressively unfunny and gross person he plays on stage. He's quiet and introverted and seems more terribly and dangerously depressed than angry. However, under the surface the comic and his on-stage alter ego share a desperate sense of alienation from other human beings, and it's that terrible modern isolation that's at the heart of the film.

Extending that exploration, 'Entertainment' plays with an interesting meta idea. What if an arty, self-referential surrealist comic like Andy Kaufman (or this film's lead Gregg Turkington) spent their career playing their most difficult and abrasive alter-ego like Kaufman's Tony Clifton (or star Turkington's Neil Hamburger, who is the basis of the on stage persona here), but instead of playing for crowds of hip and 'knowing' urban young people 'in on the joke', they only got to do that act in sad, barely populated working class dive bars out in the middle of the California desert, where the inside joke is totally lost for the audience. It raises interesting questions about perception and comedy, and how much of our enjoyment of hip ironic distance in modern entertainment is a cover for something wounded and broken inside us.

It's a difficult film I'd be hesitant in recommending to most other people, and that I have my own reservations about. Yet I find that since I've seen it, moments, images and performances are aggressively haunting me in a powerful way, and make me look forward to seeing it again.

I really hated "The Comedy," so I'm a little baffled to have rather liked the director's followup, which is basically more of the same hilarity-and/or-torture-of-the-brutally-unfunny stuff. But while his prior film just seemed annoying and smug in its contrariness, this time it felt like he'd actually located the 9th circle of Hell or something like. The movie is like an unending nightmare in which you can't escape the hopelessness, negativity and humiliation of a universe in which you (or rather the stand-up "comic" protagonist here) are on the perpetual receiving end of a joke you're not even in on. Our "hero" is some sort of victim, yet we can't even feel for him--in fact, we kind of wish more of his unhappy patrons would throw things or beat him up.

It's hard to imagine who to recommend this movie to, but it's sort of like a Beckett play: Uniquely, repetitiously desolate, with occasional content that suggests humor, but which perversely and very deliberately refuses to prompt any actual laughter. It is an expression--or analysis, or both--of pure self-loathing and existential despair. If you are in the mood for something grotesque, minimalist and defiantly unpleasant, "Entertainment" will fill that need. If you need a punchline, you can always dwell on choice of title.

I'm not sure where this director can go from here--few movies have so vividly defined their own dead end in terms of artistic intent and "message." I'll almost be disappointed if he picks himself up off the floor and makes another movie. The next logical step would seem to be suicide. The bleakest statements by folks such as Lars von Trier or Gaspar Noe still have more filmic energy than this rather elegantly crafted movie that dares you not to kick it to see if it's still breathing. Yet I can't say it was boring--there's something compelling in its sheer masochism.

I just saw this and... no idea. Parts of it are truly intriguing and fascinating to watch while still being kind of uncomfortable to watch, and other parts are just kind of obnoxious and unsatisfying. I totally didn't recognize Tye Sheridan at first, truly a chameleon (and should have been used more, if just to increase my interest). At parts the film seemed like it was on the verge of true magic, but my interest was never fully captured because it (intentionally) keeps itself at such a distance. It seems like this year I've seen many films like this, and most of them haven't stuck with me at all. Perhaps this will follow in that pattern. Don't know exactly what my rating should be

Roy anderson characters if they revealed them selves in a clearer way, arther fleck/joker if he was a real person these are what you'll get from Entertainment in addition to the melancholic and depressing sceneries. But best of it is the intense, surreal and haunting soundtrack. But as I think it's one of those movies that you'll either love it or hate it no grey area here.

ENTERTAINMENT is another one of these dramas about comedians. There aren't a ton of them, but there are perhaps a few too many. And they're all mostly the same. If you've seen one, you've seen them all.

This one tackles the topic in a slightly fresh way, but I still couldn't help but feel as if maybe it shouldn't have been made. Maybe there is something here for some people, but I wasn't crazy about it. The acting was at least decent, but overall it's pretty forgettable. Do not recommend.

OK I get how this is supposed to be anti entertainment. I get how this is supposed to be an artsy thought provoking watch. I get that this is supposed to be a dark and uncomfortable portrayal of one mans slow descent into vague mental illness. I just don't get it. It simply doesn't work. The acting is good, the film contains believable seedy characters and the setting is appropriate. Just the whole thing is sooo slow and, frankly, boring. Endless montages of the anti hero sitting mute on a bed. Endless slow shots of characters looking at each other. Mute. As a viewer you are left to infer and fill in the blanks to ascertain what is going on. The trouble is you can't be bothered to. The film and the protagonist is so unlikeable and proceedings are so slow and boring you just have no interest. True, I watched till the end. But that says more about me as a viewer than it does the film. I just wanted some form of closure, or at least some sort of justification for actually watching. I was sadly disappointed. Just more of the same slow pointless tut till proceedings crawl to an end. Even worse than Terence Malik's awful Tree of Life film. And that really is saying something. I would avoid.

Audiences not braced for what Rick Alverson's Entertainment has to offer will be doomed for an unpleasant and gruelling experience. This is anti-entertainment if anything, not in the sense that it uses anti-jokes but the comedian protagonist is on the lowest rung of humour. Using cheap sight gags, resorting to insulting the audience, taking uncalled-for hits at celebrities and using not-so-funny voices, the laughs the characters do get are cheap. This comedian is a 19 year routine from lead actor Gregg Turkington, otherwise known as Neil Hamburger, but that backstory has no relevance to the film's narrative as he's otherwise unnamed. It's performance art, but also satirical as it's not far from the truth of what some comedians actually resort to in their acts. In that sense, it's a study on what's considered entertainment, why people are drawn to it and what it means to people.

The film chronicles a cycle of repetitive sequences that grow darker in despair. The comedian attends novelty tours on his journey, browsing at eye-sore mechanical marvels in the middle of the desert, often away from the main group and guide. Then he performs at third-rate gigs such as dingy bars, often saying how he's travelled from miles away but never where from exactly, and gets upset when the audience don't laugh at his jokes. That's all part of his act, however, but it doesn't get them more comfortable. His warm-up act is an amateur mime artist played by Tye Sheridan, though how they're travelling together remains a mystery. He calls his estranged daughter before bed in hopes that she'll pick up and reconnect, but it's ostensibly in vain. Some other characters take him aside, such as detours from his wealthy cousin played by John C. Reilly, an example of success, and Michael Cera in a four minute cameo as a hustler who wants company.

It feels like the films of Roy Andersson by way of David Lynch as a surrealistic nightmare. From constant stumbles, the comedian is on a broken American dream, both as a father and as a budding entrepreneur with his comedy act – which it must be noted, is far from his stoic self. He seems willingly isolated offstage, but abrasive when he's onstage. If comedy is an escape for some, is that necessarily a good thing? It can be cryptic in these scenes that don't tie in together, but they're all expressing his anxieties and failure in his career and fatherhood. Almost every gig he does is greeted by an apathetic 'good show' from the manager while he looks dead inside. The tragedy is off-screen and internal but it's palpable, highlighted by the washed-out and carefully composed photography. Entertainment is a very unsettling film, and at one point near its middle I found myself tested by it, but it's thoroughly profound for those who want something challenging and hauntingly beautiful.

8/10

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The Comedian sprays his unwieldy hair like a pacifist disciplines their dog. Brushstrokes of hair pulse across his forehead concealing a barren head. He is a performer and a disgrace. Vulgarity and apathy are The Comedian's punch lies, and they land like a dirty southpaw. Some entertainers wish to gather admirers. The Comedian, however, knows that folks remember their enemies most vividly.

Economy motels and gas station bathrooms provide refuge from drunken halls and Mexican diners. One stop fails to secure The Comedian a hotel room, and houses him at a relative's casa. Lying on an abbreviated couch and crotchet pillow, he is tempted by lustful dreams. He has no gall to grasp them, and is reduced to a pathetic puddle.

At every stop, The Comedian reminds the audience that he stands before them as an escape. He is a salesman of forgetting. People ought to sit down and laugh, laying their real life worries on the bar counter. The Comedian hurls blazing rebukes at anyone who dares to remind the room that his character is fabricated. And he character is indeed fabricated poorly.

Eddie opens the show each night, once an admirer of The Comedian, but his face broadcasts news of a dying star. Pantomiming is the character Eddie hops into, and the contrast to The Comedian's three drinks and one microphone routine is staggering. A kid delighting common people with a clown nose and a bell hat. Cheap laughs pour out for the phenom, but they do not sand the psyches of the audience.

It would be easy to call The Comedian's work higher art, but fishing for sympathy is just as cheap as the mime's prop work. No, entertainment is an alchemy of exorcism. The Comedian meets a connoisseur of the chromatic scale, a witch of color. He dives into her art for in hopes of self-reflection. Possibly to understand why he only hears his daughter's voicemail.

The Comedian's set lists are packed with tumors. His mission is to milk laughter from an festering breast, to walk into the grime and smile. This journey will take him exactly where he envisions on the bulky televisions, yet he will not be able to stomach his destination. He will deliver a child, but will never be able communicate with the stranger.

There is a very deliberate style of anti-mainstream art, whether its prose or movies. It's all very knowing about subverting the norms. This film wears its style as a sort of propaganda in the way that Lynch announced himself in the mid 1970s. It chooses a style and an eroded narrative without the standard motifs and story lines that usually provide entry for an audience.

The major problem with this approach is that without a good idea it's pointless or rather it's inept as everything has been borrowed from someone else from another time and only the viewer's awareness of the various stylistic thefts will make it work, or not, as the case may be.

If ever a film implied its own narcissism this one succeeds excellently: it is both unoriginal while striving to appear so, and it is smug in that self-embrace. As a film school piece it might have achieved a minor praise from a tutor but that is all it might expect.

This film is complementing Gregg Turkington's Neil Hamburger stage-character with a painfully desolate private side of life.

It's a study in character design, it's writing, it's a story, it's a film.... It's... Entertainment.

...And like it's anti-comedy anti-hero, it is also a dive into anti-entertainment... The film has a slow pace, features grimey humour, surrealist eyecandy shot compositions, some high brow absurdism, and a lot of general discomfort.

".... But thaaaaat's my liife!"

// I can't believe there's a minimal amount of 600 characters required to write a review here these days, but here we go. //

I have respect for the genre, and I'll concede there were some truly artful scenes, well composed shots, and initially interesting setting, but absolutely nothing was made of it's potential. It went no where, said nothing, and gave audiences no reason to slog through to the end. There is not a single likable character, and not an ounce of emotion was inspired in me... except for disgust towards the miserable main character, who remained depressed, pathetic, and detached in private, while presenting an increasingly repulsive, abrasive, and likely insane performer persona.

The movie did cause me to feel one thing very deeply: regret for wasting my time. It was a complete and utter disappointment...an hour and some change of my life I'll never get back.

Entertainment is a poor movie with a horrendous plot and character development, joined by a talented cast that are trying their very best to bring some life to these underwhelming parts. I understand that every decision this film made was made on purpose, but I despised each and every piece of this plot. All the weird sequences that contained little to no dialogue, such as The Comedian walking through the dessert to disturbing music, or the scene where he delivers a baby, are very unclear in terms of what their objective was.

It is very hard to tell whether this movie was aiming to effect us or make us laugh. It was all far too humorous to be taken as a drama, but also too intense to be considered a comedy, the whole thing really just felt unnecessary to me. Maybe if the character was a likable one that I was able to support, then it could be redeemable, but I had no care for him or anything he did.

I understand there are fans of this movie, and if you are thinking that the reason I did not enjoy this film is because I am not familiar with the work of Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington, I am actually a huge fan of On Cinema and Decker, I also love the Tim and Eric sketches, so this was genuinely something I was looking forward to. I was excited after seeing the very enthralling trailer and enthusiastic about seeing Turkington in a lead role, while his characterisation was stellar, I could not bring myself to appreciate this movie in any way.

It simply did nothing for me other than confuse. Too funny to be dramatic, too dramatic to be funny, Entertainment is a regrettable 100 minutes.

A washed up comedian goes on a tour across the country, and finds difficulty handling a lack of appreciation for his humour.

Best Performance: Gregg Turkington / Worst Performance: Michael Cera

The previous reviewer is so right. I was also at the LA screening at Sundance NextFest tonight. The movie is boring, depressing and completely incoherent. Not one likable character. I walked out after 60 minutes and went to the bar downstairs.

While John C. Reilly tried his best to save what little there was to offer in this movie, it still failed. ZERO plot. My two other friends who sat through the whole movie said it never got any better after I left.

Save your time and money. Disappointed that it even made the NextFest list. The musical act that followed was just as incoherent and depressing.

There is no end to the main characters misery in "Entertainment". It is uncertain to me whether the writers and filmmakers are aiming for a portrait of a beaten dog worth some compassion or a predator feeding on himself and everyone around him, as every well meaning word and action in his direction is ironically swallowed whole followed by a quenched belch. I'm having a hard time finding any love for him at all but am forced to see the story through. In the spirit of Brecht, this comedian have the choice to quit, face reality and stop being the hero that saves the day. But of course, it wouldn't be brechtian for him to do so. That choice is up to me and you. How low can you go and keep on not laughing? And when that laugh comes, is it the cleansing sound of a soul, or the croaking of crows on a corpse? This is tricky: the rating depends upon how aware the producers of "Entertainment" are of it's message. I don't know them personally so I can't be the judge of that, but I hope they give a F*** about the moral of the choice. Otherwise, this movie is just one more self loathing, self pitying, sexist and childishly narcissistic wet nightmare from a masochistic comedian of the male sex, caught in his own cynical material; artsy in the bad sense. But even so, this movie is a perfect kick-off for an interesting discussion.

Entertainment is the kind of independent film you would once had caught on late night television on an arts channel back in the 1980s and 90s.

It's a throwback to an alternative USA of small towns and low rent venues where careers die or take the first steps to a long road to stardom.

Gregg Turkington plays a morose unfunny combative comedian. He plays prisons and dives. He usually stinks the place out, sometimes he does not even get paid.

When he gets heckled, he insults the heckler with a stream of abuse. This is a comedian who intentionally looks like a wreck and his life is one.

He leaves messages to his daughter on the phone. She doesn't call back. The comedian is a misanthrope and he knows there is no light at the end of the tunnel for him.

Accompanying him is a clown act. A physical performer who at least shows some gratitude and care to the comedian.

Directed by Rick Alverson and co written by Turkington. This is a deliberately downbeat film with a few strange vignettes. Michael Cera pops up in bathroom as some kind of hustler who wants the comedian's company. The comedian helps give birth to a baby that is stillborn.

Entertainment is an ironic title. It's not really entertaining. It goes nowhere and is a misery fest.

I actually just made an account so that I could give this movie some love. It is awesome. Stressful and uncomfortable as hell, but if you're down for some seriously artsy endurance-cinema, this one's for you.

I could hardly tell you what the plot is, but it's never boring. It's slow as hell, but constantly surprising. Alverson "directs" and manipulates the viewer as much as the actors, leading us one way and changing lanes. It requires a willingness to engage with it, because it doesn't answer your questions or even suggest that there is an answer. The cliché "it's the journey, not the destination" definitely applies.

It's entertaining as hell. It crawls, sometimes unbearably, but never stops moving. Every detail feels meticulous, but nothing seems to really matter.

It's beautifully shot. Nobody seems to be mentioning that. If nothing else, it looks great. It takes place in the desert and manages to be slimy and claustrophobically sterile at the same time. Where most movies make the desert seem vast, this makes it feel like a sandbox.

It's as hopeless as The Comedy, but much more empathetic, so you actually care how it ends. And it ends (relatively) big! I couldn't tell you the ending to most of the movies I've seen this year, but this one is going to stick with me.

8/10 (probably not going to watch it again, though)

Who pays to make a movie like this and who would watch it? I did not pay to watch but wish I could have been paid to. This movie is ridiculous and boring. Screaming over and over again, driving to the desert to eat a sandwich, rest stop bathroom encounter with creepy people, WTF is the point here. Who would have bankrolled this steaming pile of insanity? I can safely say this movie would be a favorite of a serial killer growing up. Still shocked someone would waste space on a memory card to create suck incomprehensible garbage. Do your self a favor and get a colonic water jetting instead.

Stupidest thing I have ever watched. Don' even think about it...

I cannot belive I watched this to the end. The most complete crock I've seen in many years of moviegoing.