The last time we heard from Seattle-based filmmaker Lynn Shelton, she was offering up “My Effortless Brilliance,” a very likable comedy that did its thing in the modest, low-key way familiar to so many Northwest-made movies.
Shelton’s new film has landed with a much louder thump. From its attention-grabbing bow at the Sundance Film Festival in January to a splashy profile in this week’s Sunday New York Times, “Humpday” has been garnering attention in a very un-Northwesty fashion.
No wonder: It’s a truly funny film, and discomfitingly insightful about certain kinds of male behavior.
The central situation is the old city mouse/country mouse dilemma: two old friends have trod different paths in life. Ben (Mark Duplass) is married, with a responsible job, and trying to get his wife, Anna (Alycia Delmore) pregnant.
Their quiet Seattle home is invaded one night by Andrew (Joshua Leonard), a globe-trotting adventurer, who needs a place to crash. He’s just back from tramping around Mexico, which makes Ben’s life sound just a bit drab.
The twist on all this is new: Andrew and Ben, with the help of substances and the go-for-it mood of a really good party, dare each other to participate in a homegrown porno movie. All they have to do is shoot it, submit it to a local contest and congratulate each other on how cool and liberated and artsy they are.
Then the morning after comes, and each “bro” surely wishes the other would call it off. But they’re too competitive to back down, and Ben has too much to prove, or disprove, about selling out.
This testosterone-fueled friendship/rivalry is frequently hilarious, but Anna is no third wheel. The scenes of Ben attempting to get up the courage to mention to Anna, that, uh, er, he’s going to appear on camera in a sex film with Andrew are absolutely spot-on.
Shelton’s method is to workshop the scenes and dialogue with the actors, improvising until they get it right. Duplass is a veteran of this, having appeared in handmade movies such as “The Puffy Chair”; Leonard was one of the doomed in “The Blair Witch Project.” The director herself appears in a supporting role, as Andrew’s polymorphously perverse new friend.
The rough-around-the-edges approach fits the milieu, and the momentum of the kooky premise carries it forward. The only fuzzy thing about “Humpday” is that premise, which indeed sounds like something that wouldn’t survive the morning after and is therefore hard to believe.
And yet that might be the point: Male idiocy endures even when ratcheted up to an absurd level like this. (I should add that Shelton betrays nothing but bemused sympathy for her men.)
“Humpday” is like a dream where you’re doing something you really don’t want to do, but you can’t figure a way out or remember how you got into it in the first place. Except much funnier.
“Humpday”: 3½ stars
When two old buddies reunite, their male rivalry leads them to dare each other into making a film for an amateur porn contest — starring themselves. Seattle filmmaker Lynn Shelton’s Sundance success is frequently hilarious, and mercilessly insightful about certain kinds of male behavior.
Rated: R for language, nudity, subject matter
Showing: Harvard Exit
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