Fool’s Paradise – A Toothless Hollywood Satire

For as long as there’s been a Hollywood, there have been films and television series that have made fun of it through satire or other means. After countless iterations over the years, as Hollywood has evolved along with them, the well for material is running dry. However, that fact hasn’t exactly stopped them from being made. When it comes to Fool’s Paradise, the feature writing and directorial debut of Charlie Day, it is a satire with absolutely nothing new to say or anything else to say which is kind of ironic for reasons that will be explained shortly. Though the film has nothing to say, it still keeps trying, ridiculously snowballing and beating audiences over the head with its nothingness. Consistently unfunny and alternating between insufferable and dull, it shows no semblance of story or characters despite of an impressive cast who are wasted.

Fool’s Paradise follows a recently released mental health patient (Day) who kept stumbling his was into increasingly ridiculous situations, starting with a sleazy publicist named Lenny (Jeong) who saw the man as his big break. Most people would find that a film led by a character who doesn’t talk stumbling into increasingly ridiculous situations wouldn’t work but that’s pretty much the plot. Meant to be a commentary on Hollywood and the film industry, its attempts are toothless and lazy and the film keeps beating that dead horse into submission. It has nothing new to say while its caricaturish characters are so thin and insufferable that they are more irritating than endearing. Ultimately, the patient and Lenny got their big break as the former looked strikingly like a famed method actor who was causing problems for a film production by declining to leave his trailer.

Hired by the production to take the place of the actor, the production finished the western without him. As the man needed a name, he quickly developed the name Latte Pronto and following the release of the film, he became a worldwide sensation and one of the most in demand actors even though he was the furthest thing from an actor and was clearly in over his head. In spite of his many faults, everyone found themselves infatuated by his apparent charm. What was surely intended to be funny was the opposite. Armed with his own manager and assistant as part of a massive hired team, his rise was meteoric until an unfortunate incident led to an even quicker fall. Just like every failing actor, completing Pronto’s arc as an actor was an obligatory comeback. However, he simply found another way to fail upwards. In the end, with no story, characters, or character development to be had, there story virtually has no ending.

For a film that is merely Charlie Day, as a character that didn’t talk, reacting to things for roughly 90 or so minutes, that premise needed to be supported by strong enough writing to work. Unfortunately, this was not the case for Fool’s Paradise. Stale and derivative jokes aside, the dialog was mediocre at best as the film seemed uninterested in being anything more than a revolving door of ridiculous characters whose only purpose was to represent the various ridiculous extremes of Hollywood. They obviously did most of the talking but the lack of depth overall made it difficult to care about whatever was happening. Trying so hard to make a point, the film had to be at least grounded in something to work. A character with no backstory and who didn’t talk was perhaps not the best choice. Putting Pronto in a serious of increasingly ridiculous situations, Day simply could not handle the physicality of an oddball fish-out-of-water wandering from scene to scene and reacting to things. If it had bothered developing a connection between audiences and Pronto, it could have been the film’s saving grace. However, there was none to be found.

At the end of the day, Fool’s Paradise is a film that has nothing new to say and offers little in the way of substance. Some may fine more meaning here but for the most part, is an unfunny misfire.

still courtesy of Roadside Attractions

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.