Film Review: The Clapper

The Clapper

The cast of The Clapper is a melting pot of some of Hollywood’s funniest actors. A few featured are Mean Girls’ Amanda Seyfried, The Hangover’s Ed Helms, Saturday Night Live’s Tracy Morgan, King of Queens’ Leah Remini, The Wolf of Wall Street’s P.J. Burns, and the late Alan Thicke. Musician Adam Levine also took his hand at comedy and had a cameo in the picture. The film’s description portrays it as a comedy centered around one man’s 15 minutes of fame gone wrong. With the combination of a strong cast and a funny storyline, this movie seemed like it could be a home run. However, it fell short.

The protagonist, Eddie Krumble (Helms) and his best friend Chris (Morgan) work in show-business. Their job is to sit in live-studio audiences so they can ask pre-mediated questions and react how they are told. The job doesn’t pay great, but it’s enough to help them get by. Life is mediocre and normal for the duo; Krumble lives alone and talks to his mother on the phone every once in a while.  He is fairly contempt with his quiet life, until a late night talk show puts together a funny series of clips that changes everything. The clips are of Krumble in the audience for various infomercial shoots; while showing the clip, the host makes the point that it’s the same guy in every audience. The talk-show then launches a campaign to find “The Clapper,” and figure out why he’s always in the audience somewhere. Krumble’s life is turned upside down with his new, unwanted fame.  He is a bit technologically challenege, so he has no idea how to handle the situation. While all of this excitement is going on, he is interrupted from his main goal of building up the courage to ask Judy (Seyfried) to go on a date with him.

The longer-than-normal opening credits of the film show Helms’ character somberly walking through an animated art sequence to an alternative, monotone song. This immediately gives the film less of a humorous vibe, and more of a self-pity one. This continues throughout the movie through the various interactions between Helms’ character and the others; mostly between him and his love interest (Seyfriend).  In their conversations there is usually at least one line that is inaudible, because they tend to mumble. Perhaps this is intentional to make the relationship seem more relatable; perhaps not. Either way, it did not work well. The self-pity aroma continued as we learned more about Krumble’s and Judy’s lives.

Judy has a pet goat and works at a gas station. Her boss has anger problems and threatens to fire her a lot. Krumble doesn’t know how to work basic technology, and doesn’t watch television because he can’t afford to pay his bill. Therefore, when his 15 minutes of fame begins, he doesn’t even realize it until a few days later. Halfway through the movie he tells Judy he is a widow, which adds absolutely nothing to the plot. It creates yet another sad moment in a film that is labeled as a comedy. The characters have back stories that aren’t portrayed in a way that is funny, and therefore the film is hard to laugh at.

The concept of cynical comedy has always been a popular one, but this film didn’t balance it well enough. It projects feelings of sadness and frustration as opposed to happiness and light-heartedness. In one particular scene, Krumble has a meltdown in the middle of a busy street. He loses his temper and screams at children and adults alike. Naturally, because this is the modern age, phone cameras quickly video the entire interaction. Videos of “The Clapper’s Meltdown” go viral and create an even bigger spotlight on him. This leaves the audience feeling pity for him yet again. Cynical comedy tends to be more effect when there is a lesson to be learned. In Tate Taylor’s The Help, there is cynicism with the comedic moments. However, there are important lessons about race to be learned in that film; there is no obviously important lesson that goes along with The Clapper that the cynicism contributes to.

While the movie wasn’t excellent, The Clapper was not horrible either. The comic relief shown by Krumple’s mother’s (Brenda Vaccaro) antics had the entire theater laughing. The duo of Adam Levine and P.J. Byrne as the talk show producers also proved to be a strong one. The ending was “cute.” However, the film as a whole just didn’t seem to reach its full potential. It was too cynical to be an enjoyable movie to watch. If the last-second happy ending was taken out, it could easily be a tragedy about the negative effects of fame. Unfortunately, it may have fallen into the jinx that the stronger the cast, the weaker the movie.

Writer: Dito Montiel

Director: Dito Montiel

Producers: Mike Falbo, Ed Helms, Alex Lebovici, Dito Montiel, Steve Ponce, Robin Schorr

Executive Producers: John M. Bennett, Michael Bien, Ray Bouderau, Maurice Fadida, Mickey Gooch Jr.

Main Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Ed Helms, Tracy Morgan

Running Time: 99 Minutes