These go-getters aren’t getting anything from me.
Synopsis: A deadbeat drunk and a junkie hooker join forces to take on the city, each other, and their own personal shortcomings while trying to scam $98 for bus tickets out of town. (IMDB)
Starring: Aaron Abrams, Tommie-Amber Pirie, and Kristian Bruun
Writers: Aaron Abrams and Brendan Gall
Director: Jeremy LaLonde
Rating: n/a
Running Time: 80mins
Trailer:
Oddball comedies are a subgenre of comedy where strange or eccentric characters do outrageous things for comedic effect. These types of films live or die on the characters themselves. They can’t be too over-the-top and they still have to be likeable and relatable enough to care about them. Suffice it to say, this was nowhere near the case with this film as its characters are its downfall. The sheer despicability of the characters on screen made this film often unbearable and a chore to watch, making an 80 minute running time feel much longer.
The film’s title, The Go-Getters, was intentionally ironic since these “Go-Getters’ didn’t go get anything as much as they tried. The story followed a drunk named Owen (Abrams) and a drug addict hooker named Lacie (Pirie) who did everything wrong while trying to scrounge for money to pay for bus tickets to leave the town that has done them both wrong. What was surely supposed to be funny was that the fact that they were both so lazy and misguided that they kept finding themselves in trouble. However, none of it worked because its overreliance on the offensive simply wasn’t funny. All the characters seemed to do was just drop f-bombs at each other.
One would hope that with such despicable characters that the story would try to redeem them somehow but that of course didn’t happen. Though the point maybe was to not give them a happy ending, the film offered very little in the way of character development, leading one to wonder about the point of it all. In terms of other characters to help balance out the despicability, the film was lacking, offering only those who did nothing more than roll their eyes at Owen and Lacie and enabled their questionable behavior which often went too far and was not followed by any consequences whatsoever.
Because of the horrendous material here, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the acting wasn’t all that great. Abrams and Pirie’s commitment to the horrendous material is commendable and their chemistry was actually decent but it didn’t matter as they were both unfunny and a pain to watch.
Overall, this was an unbearable comedy with an overreliance on the offensive and no redeeming qualities whatsoever about a pair of unlikable and despicable idiots who do nothing but curse at each other for 80+ minutes. Ultimately, if you can tolerate the characters, you may tolerate the film but it definitely doesn’t make it easy.
Score: 3/10
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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.