- Actors: Common, Bradley Whitford, Anders Holm, Rob Riggle, Katie Holmes
- Director: Judy Greer
- Disc Format: Color, NTSC, Widescreen
- Language: English
- Subtitles: English, Spanish
- Region: Region 1
- Number of discs: 1
- Rated: R
- Studio: Lions Gate
- DVD Release Date: October 23, 2018
- Run Time: 82 minutes
If ever there
was evidence that getting a film made is more about who you know than what you
can do, A Happening of Monumental
Proportions would be exhibit A. Filled to the brim with recognizable and
name actors, mostly an assembly line of glorified cameos, one can’t help but wonder
what they are all doing in a film with such an unimpressive script. The answer
comes with the realization that this unfocused ensemble comedy is the
directorial debut of character actor Judy Greer. Greer has had an impressive
career as a supporting actress, which is undoubtedly how she was able to get so
many fellow actors to commit to being in the first screenplay by Gary Lundy (another
working actor) that fails at every turn.
The biggest problem
with this film may actually be the biggest selling point. With as many name
actors as Greer has convinced to be involved, she also has to find a way to utilize
them all. Unfortunately, rather than feeling like an ensemble narrative, it just
feels like a movie that doesn’t have any direction. Things happen and
characters interact with each other, but often there is nothing but proximity
to connect all of the narrative threads together. By the time the credits roll,
one can’t help but wonder what the point was beyond giving a handful of actors
work between real jobs.
The location eventually tying all of
the stories together is a public elementary school in Los Angeles. When two school
administrators (Allison Janney and Rob Riggle) arrive at the school on career
day, they are shocked to discover the school groundskeeper deceased in front of
the entrance. With no official figures available to quickly remove the body (easily
the stupidest of the script’s plot contrivances), they decide to move it into
the teacher’s lounge. This is the closest thing the film has to a central storyline,
but most of the characters are made up of teachers that never seem to be in
class.
These teachers include Mr. McRow
(Anders Holm), a tired cliché as the teacher having an identity crisis that he
openly shares with his students, along with his colleague Mr. Ramirez (John
Cho). You might think that they would have scenes interacting with the
administrators and the dead body, but the characters and their individual storylines
mostly stay separate, and it isn’t difficult to imagine that most of these
actors were never even on set at the same time. The students get in on the
storyline, at least the ones that help connect unrelated adults to the story.
Storm Reid (A Wrinkle in Time) has an
unfortunate storyline involving the well-meaning but creepy advances of a
fellow student with a crush, but her real purpose seems to simply provide a
reason to connect her father, Daniel (played by Common) to the storyline. Before
arriving to his daughter’s school for Career Day, Daniel has quite the morning.
He arrives to work to find that a new corporate suit (Bradley Whitford) has been
hired to shake things up. When an incident involving a coffee machine has the
office under scrutiny, it comes out that Daniel is having an affair with his
married co-worker (Jennifer Garner), and he is fired. As coincidence would have
it, Daniel finds himself at Career Day right beside the man that just fired
him.
If none of this sounds particularly
funny, that’s because it isn’t. The characters are poorly developed, which
wouldn’t matter if they were at least funny. I imagine Greer planned to improve
the script with the performances by the talented cast, but that clearly did not
happen. Even funny actors are hardly amusing in this film, and those who don’t excel
at humor are horribly out of place here (most notably Katie Holmes as an EMT).
Not even the arrival of Keanu Reeves playing against type can’t squeeze a laugh
out of this screenplay.
The DVD special features only include
a promotional featurette. It is titled “A Sneak Peek at A Happening of Monumental Proportions,” which is not exactly
something anyone would need when they can just watch the film.
Entertainment Value:
4/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 3.5/10
Historical
Significance: 1/10
Special Features: 1/10
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