Originally published September 11, 2016. Updated April 16, 2018.
Best of Seven, 2016.
Directed by Jonnie Stapleton.
Starring Jonnie Stapleton, Paula Kelley and Jim Armstrong.
SYNOPSIS:
After a nearly fatal overdose, a young man with multiple personality disorder attempts to go one week without his medication.
It’s becoming a trend in comedy these days to have a longer feature. At a modest one hundred minutes, Best of Seven is a comedy that seems to buck this trend, but for some reason it feels like the film drags. And drags. And drags.
Best of Seven is the debut feature length film from writer-director-actor Johnnie Stapleton, and I would hazard a guess that it’s something of a vanity project too. But more on that later. The movie follows Johnny (I’m not sure why Stapleton bothered to change the spelling of the name when he plays the character himself. Like, either think of a name for the character or don’t bother. Changing the spelling just seems lazy), a young professional with multiple personality disorder. Having taken medication for most of his adult life, Johnny is severely depressed. He overdoses on his medication, prompting his parents to demand that he comes off it for one week, to see how he fairs. Predictably, Johnny’s multiple personalities all turn up and chaos ensues. Within the week, Johnny has successfully lost his job, his girlfriend and his apartment. Meanwhile, the fact that he’s found a winning lottery ticket causes his personalities to begin killing each other off one by one.
One of the few good things about Best of Seven is the incredible shooting. Each of Johnny’s personalities are played by Stapleton, and some clever camera trickery and angles are employed to ensure that transitions and scenes are as smooth as possible. Something of a technical miracle for director of photography Dominico Grassi, who is also co-writer. Each personality is easily identifiable by some rather obvious and hastily concocted costuming. There’s the nerd, the toddler, the woman (exaggerated sigh), the gym junkie, the troublemaker and the Russian. I’m pretty sure that last one is in there just so Stapleton could spend a chunk of the movie talking in a rather well realised Russian accent.
The film strikes a balance between cute indie flick with soft afternoon light and quirky typography, and slapstick goofy bro comedy. It’s almost as though it can’t decide whether it’s one or the other, which is unfortunate, because it results in both being done rather poorly when there was lots of potential for it to be great. The feeling is that Stapleton and co. were going for quirky, a la Lars and the Real Girl, Jeff Who Lives at Home and the like. It doesn’t quite hit the mark. The pacing is totally off, with no discernible structure in place at all. The fight and chase scenes go on for far too long and are boring and predictable. There are a few too many crude sex jokes. It is very rarely funny; it extracted one or two sympathy laughs from me at best. There are about four false endings to the movie – just when you think it’s about to be over, it’s not.
I think there are some weak attempts at giving Best of Seven some ‘heart’, but they also fall flat. The movie ends with a nonsensical dance number to a shitty soft rock song, with our protagonist stuffing dollar bills into models’ bras in a hotel room. So any semblance of heartwarming or sweet Best of Seven has conjured in the final, admittedly touching, scenes is quickly dashed away. A promising premise, just executed poorly and with way too much self-aggrandisation.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Kirsty Capes
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