Humpday (2009)

Directed by: Lynn Shelton
Starring: Mark Duplass, Joshua Leonard

****1/2

So often characters and story go hand in hand. In fact, one can rarely function without the other in cases when both are involved. In Humpday, I found myself so engrossed in what these characters were doing that I didn't really need to have a connection with them. Unfortunately, having a connection with them really would have taken this film above and beyond the already really great movie that it is.

Before I can really delve into what makes this movie great and how it manages to get there, its important to try to put into words the plot. In short, Ben (Mark Duplass) is happily married. Andrew (Joshua Leonard) is Ben's longtime best friend who spends his time as a traveling artist, or some version of one. When Andrew pays Ben and Mrs. Ben, Anna, a surprise visit, the two rekindle their friendship. Much of this rekindling comes at a party with some open-minded hippies that Andrew met, at which they challenge one another to have sex on camera for a art festival called Humpfest, which shows films in which the art of pornography is the central focus. Now I can't leave out this important bit... their challenge is to have sex with each other. They drunkenly claim that nothing is more artistic than two straight dudes bonin'.

Any writer or director interested in making this movie and still be taken seriously really would be best advised to skip the pitch process and just make it on his or her own. This is what writer/director Lynn Shelton appears to have done and her touch on this movie is perfect. To pull off such an absurd idea without making American Pie Part 15 showed me two things. The first being that Shelton knew what she wanted to do with this movie and she didn't stray from it. She didn't wander when opportunities to include gross-out comedy presented itself. The other thing that made this film really work is the genuinely real characters and their genuinely real relationships.

This is, however, where it gets tricky because as I mentioned, I had little to no connection with any of these characters. I never really felt passionate about them. I was interested in what was happening to them, but I never really cared about the consequences for their sake. However, because Shelton created such realistic relationships through the conversations and things as simple as awkward pauses or laughs within them and through the way interactions with strangers played out, the movie, with the help of the hand held camera work gave the movie a documentary type realism. I did feel like I was spying on private moments, intimate or otherwise. Without this realism, this 100% realism throughout the entire film, I never would have bought into something as outlandish as these two straight men stopping at nothing to make art (that's what we'll call it for now).

Having then bought into the film as a whole, I began to care about what happened to the characters for the sake of the film. I continuously hoped that the movie not take a turn for the worse, that the right decisions be made to maintain the style, the tone and the mood and that it wouldn't abandon the idea that its a comedy thanks to its concept and not its jokes. I was not disappointed and as a result, the importance of my personal relationship with the characters slowly diminished. It became more about the movie itself and less about Ben and Andrew. Its strange that this could work and to be perfectly honest, I'm not really sure how it does. I'm not sure how it even makes sense that a character driven film can function perfectly without strong ties to its characters.

The last question I'm really left with is why did I not tie together with Ben and Andrew. Part of the reason is the performances unfortunately. For a good portion of the film I really wanted to like Duplass and Leonard and actually not once were either of them bad. I'll even go further than that actually... both of them were actually better than average most of the time. However, neither of them really took control of the movie. They played off of each other extremely well but I always felt like they were waiting for the other one of them to take control of the scene. And this happened with all the characters. Duplass and Alycia Delmore who plays Anna had the same problem. While the chemistry was spot on, the performances just seemed to lag behind a little bit. Its an unconventional complaint but its really the best way I can dissect what was missing.

Evidently, my complaints ultimately rendered useless with Humpday because despite what I found wrong with it, I found so little wrong with it. Its a tiny little gem that I'm glad has made some headway in 2009 because its a worthwhile watch and that's at the very, very least.