Moving is one of those movies that was made on somebody's credit card and while that's an admirable achievement, after watching the film you may wonder if that money wouldn't have been better spent getting a big screen TV or paying off a student loan.
The story of Moving focuses on Ron Fervent (I. Derek Leonidoff), writer of technical manuals and aspiring novelist, and his friend John Thomas (Terry Jernigan), writer for a trashy supermarket tabloid. Ron returns from a week long publishing conference and discovers that his house has been stolen. Someone didn't break into his house and steal something, they took the whole house, leaving an empty lot with a couple of PVC pipes sticking out of the ground. Ron sets out to find his home and track down those responsible for taking it and his friend John comes along because well, because this is a wacky buddy comedy and you've got to have two characters to make a buddy comedy.
Wacky is a very good word for Moving. It's a lot better than funny, that's for sure. There's certainly a lot of attempted humor in the film but most of it never gets any farther than that. It's like someone loaded up a shotgun with a bunch of potentially funny punchlines and fired it at the script. There's no real effort to establish a tone or a pace or to set up the humor in any way and because of that, there's never really any payoff except in the most ham handed way possible. Leonidoff and Jernigan put as much energy and wit as they can into their roles, but neither Ron nor John come close to resembling actual human beings so there's no weight to any of the things they say. The jokes just whiz by with no real purpose and aimed at no real target.
I'm not sure Moving is even meant to be funny, which is an odd thing to think about an over-the-top absurdist comedy. But when watching the film I was reminded of something a comedian once said about hating it when the audience applauded his jokes. He hated it because he was trying to reach them on a gut level and make them laugh, an emotional reaction, but that the applause was an intellectual reaction. The applause was about recognizing the joke was supposed to be funny and that the comedian said the audience wasn't even applauding him for being so clever. They were really applauding themselves for being clever enough to appreciate the comedian's cleverness. That's what Moving is like. It doesn't really want to paralyze you with laughter. It wants you to sit there are say to yourself "That was funny. That was smart. That was clever." The filmmakers behind Moving don't want to entertain, they want to be admired.
Some legitimate laughs do pop up now and them. Beer grenades. An apple pie gag. A substitute steering wheel. Some quivering man-boobs. But the filmmakers are so concerned with showing off their senses of humor they overwork most of the jokes. There's a scene where Ron and John are left on the side of the road in their underwear. Now, two pasty, out-of-shape guys standing around in their tighty-whiteys is just a naturally funny gag. But that's not enough for the guys behind Moving. No, they've got to give both Ron and John wacky underwear but like the rest of the film, they're more concerned with trying to be wacky than in simply being funny.
Moving is impressive as a very professionally done film made for thousands, not millions or even tens of thousands, of dollars. It proves that these filmmakers have the skill to make a good movie. Moving just isn't it.
The story of Moving focuses on Ron Fervent (I. Derek Leonidoff), writer of technical manuals and aspiring novelist, and his friend John Thomas (Terry Jernigan), writer for a trashy supermarket tabloid. Ron returns from a week long publishing conference and discovers that his house has been stolen. Someone didn't break into his house and steal something, they took the whole house, leaving an empty lot with a couple of PVC pipes sticking out of the ground. Ron sets out to find his home and track down those responsible for taking it and his friend John comes along because well, because this is a wacky buddy comedy and you've got to have two characters to make a buddy comedy.
Wacky is a very good word for Moving. It's a lot better than funny, that's for sure. There's certainly a lot of attempted humor in the film but most of it never gets any farther than that. It's like someone loaded up a shotgun with a bunch of potentially funny punchlines and fired it at the script. There's no real effort to establish a tone or a pace or to set up the humor in any way and because of that, there's never really any payoff except in the most ham handed way possible. Leonidoff and Jernigan put as much energy and wit as they can into their roles, but neither Ron nor John come close to resembling actual human beings so there's no weight to any of the things they say. The jokes just whiz by with no real purpose and aimed at no real target.
I'm not sure Moving is even meant to be funny, which is an odd thing to think about an over-the-top absurdist comedy. But when watching the film I was reminded of something a comedian once said about hating it when the audience applauded his jokes. He hated it because he was trying to reach them on a gut level and make them laugh, an emotional reaction, but that the applause was an intellectual reaction. The applause was about recognizing the joke was supposed to be funny and that the comedian said the audience wasn't even applauding him for being so clever. They were really applauding themselves for being clever enough to appreciate the comedian's cleverness. That's what Moving is like. It doesn't really want to paralyze you with laughter. It wants you to sit there are say to yourself "That was funny. That was smart. That was clever." The filmmakers behind Moving don't want to entertain, they want to be admired.
Some legitimate laughs do pop up now and them. Beer grenades. An apple pie gag. A substitute steering wheel. Some quivering man-boobs. But the filmmakers are so concerned with showing off their senses of humor they overwork most of the jokes. There's a scene where Ron and John are left on the side of the road in their underwear. Now, two pasty, out-of-shape guys standing around in their tighty-whiteys is just a naturally funny gag. But that's not enough for the guys behind Moving. No, they've got to give both Ron and John wacky underwear but like the rest of the film, they're more concerned with trying to be wacky than in simply being funny.
Moving is impressive as a very professionally done film made for thousands, not millions or even tens of thousands, of dollars. It proves that these filmmakers have the skill to make a good movie. Moving just isn't it.
