Well...yes. Sort of. I did laugh a bit throughout the coarse of the film. It was a kind of subtle and silly brand of humour.
He HAS actually made comedy films before. In 1974 he made a 270 minute film called "'Rameau's Nephew' by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen" (what a title) which, I've heard, is supposed to be a comedy. And the film "*Corpus Callosum" is a slapstick comedy, which I also have yet to see!
What happens? A majority of the film is looking at a table with kitchen materials on it, and eventually they start moving around. Other stuff happens at the very end, too, which, I guess, was also supposed to be comic. Unless it was meant to be frightening in one way or the other, but, the events that occur towards the end were pretty stupid.
Basically, we start to hear students talking in the background. They're talking about movies and how much they love sex and violence. It sounds a lot like acting...bad acting. And it comes across as heavy-handed satire and preachings.
There's a line from the film in which one student tells another that they're going to go see a movie. The other student actually says:
"...I hope it has a lot of SEX and VIOLENCE!"
...ugh! There's hardly anything worse in your comedy (or slow, experimental film) than horrible satire and social commentary. Yes, movies have sex and violence! Get over it Michael Snow! You aren't a genius for telling me that!
There's another interesting scene that happens afterwords, which actually contains nudity. Is that social commentary or is Snow being a major hypocrite? I really don't know.
If you want to see a great film containing a lot of social commentary on the explicit content in films is Michael Haneke's "Funny Games".
However, most of the film is what I explained (and ranted less about), with the breakfast materials. It is pretty funny when these materials start moving around, but it seriously does get pretty boring.
Overall, "Breakfast (Table Top Dolly)" isn't a very good film. While not awful, it fails to be nearly as good as other Snow films. It doesn't have the strange story element of "Wavelength" or the hypnotic intensity of "Back and Forth", it just has a little bit of comedy and interesting elements, but, overall, I found it to be preachy and boring.
He HAS actually made comedy films before. In 1974 he made a 270 minute film called "'Rameau's Nephew' by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen" (what a title) which, I've heard, is supposed to be a comedy. And the film "*Corpus Callosum" is a slapstick comedy, which I also have yet to see!
What happens? A majority of the film is looking at a table with kitchen materials on it, and eventually they start moving around. Other stuff happens at the very end, too, which, I guess, was also supposed to be comic. Unless it was meant to be frightening in one way or the other, but, the events that occur towards the end were pretty stupid.
Basically, we start to hear students talking in the background. They're talking about movies and how much they love sex and violence. It sounds a lot like acting...bad acting. And it comes across as heavy-handed satire and preachings.
There's a line from the film in which one student tells another that they're going to go see a movie. The other student actually says:
"...I hope it has a lot of SEX and VIOLENCE!"
...ugh! There's hardly anything worse in your comedy (or slow, experimental film) than horrible satire and social commentary. Yes, movies have sex and violence! Get over it Michael Snow! You aren't a genius for telling me that!
There's another interesting scene that happens afterwords, which actually contains nudity. Is that social commentary or is Snow being a major hypocrite? I really don't know.
If you want to see a great film containing a lot of social commentary on the explicit content in films is Michael Haneke's "Funny Games".
However, most of the film is what I explained (and ranted less about), with the breakfast materials. It is pretty funny when these materials start moving around, but it seriously does get pretty boring.
Overall, "Breakfast (Table Top Dolly)" isn't a very good film. While not awful, it fails to be nearly as good as other Snow films. It doesn't have the strange story element of "Wavelength" or the hypnotic intensity of "Back and Forth", it just has a little bit of comedy and interesting elements, but, overall, I found it to be preachy and boring.
