Visioneer George Washington Winsterhammerman lives a comfortable but monotonous life in this slightly futuristic black comedy. When people start exploding from stress and George is showing early symptoms, he's forced to examine his life. Taking a look at his nice job, his sexless marriage and his resistance to life coaching, George reconsiders the philosophy of happiness through mindless activity.
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Reviews
Watching people being ridiculously bored have never been as funny... Or has it? Or wait... Is this even funny at all? Is it supposed to be?Needless to say, this is not your typical laugh by the minute comedy... I think it's meant as a comedy, cause it's hardly dramatic... Dark or/and dry comedy perhaps... Anyway, I get what the movie is trying to say and I think the message is a good one.I just don't care much for how it was said, and I don't think it has enough substance to fill out the 90 minute running time.Not terrible, but really not that great either.
This movie is very poor. The plot and the acting makes you feel incredibly bored, and after a while, I really felt like I had to stop watching. The woman on the intercom reporting on how many minutes are left until the weekend was not even slightly funny the first time, let alone the 20th time. Same with the middle finger greeting.I really wish I hadn't watched the trailer as that told me absolutely everything that happened in the first half of the movie, nothing was a surprise.I just want to note that I loved The Hangover, and I do believe that Zach is a great actor, but this is his worst role ever. It doesn't suit him, and is just plain boring.Steer clear of this movie is you don't want to be disappointed.There where a few attempts at trying to be funny but by and large nothing happened for the majority of the movie.
I feel bad about giving this film such a bad grade. The cinematography was decent, as was the acting, the set design, and the dialogue. the thing is, I was really excited to see this film. As a sci-fi fan, a dark comedy about a corporation-country is right up my alley. I love to see a film exposing the dangers of today's society and possibly granting guidance as to how to avoid the seemingly inevitable. That's the kind of movie I love. Therefore, "Visioneers" was disappointing.Jared Drake's debut, though entertaining, failed to delve fully into the corporation-country and to deliver a satisfactory resolution to the issues that were brought up in the film. I wanted to see a film in which a country was completely controlled be a corporation, where the president of the corp. was the president of the land, where people pledged their allegiance to a corporation's flag, where media blasted incessant propaganda. Instead, Drake presents the audience with an in-between world. The nation and corporation are entwined but semi-separate as well, with a relationship similar to that of the church and the state old Europe. The media is in the beginning stages of total censorship, but shocking footage revealing the shortcomings of the nation are still shown, revolutionary groups are shut down with caution, and the radio is available during most of the film. This mid-state in itself would not have discouraged me. In fact, I was hoping this film would be a new take on the corporate dystopia: how to stop it before it starts...but alas. Instead, "Visioneers" ends with a bout of love-fueled adultery that sparks a dreamy hallucination, sending a vague message about the need to maintain one's passions, to "feel something", and (most cliché) to keep dreaming. Nevertheless, the message is at least a positive one, the dialogue is often witty, and the acting isn't bad. Galifianakis holds his own as a leading man and Judy Greer is superb as his floundering, depressed wife. "Visioneers" is worth a viewing; just don't go in expecting "Brazil".
The common theme of the positive reviews that try to refute the negative reviews seems to be that the people who didn't like this movie didn't understand the film or wanted something with fart jokes.The truth is this movie is plain and simply bad. It tries to go back to clichéd themes of elusive happiness in the modern world, the rat race, corporations trying to monopolize happiness, yadda yadda yadda - and utterly fails on all counts.At the beginning of the movie I was trying to decide whether the filmmakers were making fun of "weird and profound" movies or trying to be one of them. As time wore on (the only way to describe enduring this film - it's like being worn down by awfulness) the mournful, solitary piano lines and strings floating in the background made it obvious that this was an extremely poor attempt at being profound. To the people who love it, I'm sure it seems profound - it might have to me back when I was young and naive and hadn't seen a hundred movies that have covered similar themes in a way that makes this look like it was cooked up and executed by film school dropouts.After writing that, I realize I should apologize to film school dropouts for the insult of associating them with this movie.It is billed as a black comedy but without any comedic moments that rise above an occasional and very slight "heh". If you were recovering from surgery and your doctor warned you to avoid any strenuous laughing that might damage damage your stitches, you would be perfectly safe watching this movie. As a bonus it can function as a non addictive sleep aid.Only two things kept me watching this movie initially - the presence of Judy Greer and Missi Pyle - I've liked their work in the past. I thought their presence would at least bring some redeeming quality to the movie, but in the end the movie was so bad it ended up tainting even them. Combining the utterly lifeless performance of Zach Galifianakis (I'm not talking about how he was supposed to be intentionally lifeless in his role - I'm talking about how he was lifeless at being lifeless. He was lifeless even in his spastic fits.) and the overacting of most of the supporting cast, the movie has almost no redeeming qualities. The film is poorly shot and looks like it was made on the cheap with props, sets, and vehicles borrowed from friends and relatives. Other filmmakers have been able to pull that off and add charm and flavor to their movies - on this one it just makes it feel even more amateurish.Sometimes film makers are so good they can put together weirdness, odd performances, and seemingly low quality production values in a kind of stealth approach and then, with their above average skill set, they bring it all together in a way that surprises the viewer. They use non conventional methods to catch you off guard and then really deliver something unique and entertaining.I struggled through this movie hoping that there was a moment of redemption when the plodding storyline, the bad acting, and the poor look and feel of the movie crystallized into something where it all was all revealed to be intentional by the filmmakers. Unfortunately there was no such master plan - the movie is not plodding, weird, and cheap looking because the filmmakers are highly skilled in the art - it is that way because they aren't any good at it.