*BONK*
*BONK*
*BONK*
*BONK*
What's that sound? That's me banging my head against the wall after watching this movie. Why? Because it was the umpteenth time I've witnessed a writer/director making the same narcissistic mistake. It is an error so basic, so obvious and so fatal that I can't comprehend how it gets repeated in script after script, film after film. After all, there are roughly 18,347 books out there that teach people how to write screenplays. This isn't some mystery religion where no one knows how it's supposed to work. Yet this stupidly self-centered flaw is one of the most common problems in cinema, particularly in the work of writer/directors.
What's the trouble? Not giving the viewer a single, solitary reason to care what the bleep happens to the main character of the story. No reason to care who he is or what he wants. No reason to care if he lives or dies. The character doesn't do anything to attract anyone's interest. He doesn't say anything to draw anyone's sympathy. There's nothing about him, his personality or his situation that justifies a single second of anyone's attention. The audience is merely presented with this schmuck and it is assumed that they will care about him.
That's not how it works. The character has to do something to establish he's a good person. Or he has to be presented in a situation that can be identified with. Or he has to step on screen with an overtly comedic or dramatic or romantic persona that people instantly want to know more about. Or well, there's got to be something. You can't begin a motion picture by treating the viewer like a child in a Dickensian orphanage, handing them flavorless porridge and demanding that they eat it.
In Nailed, that tasteless gruel is Jeff Romano (Brad Rowe). He's an aspiring screenwriter who's left his close knit New York family behind to try and make it in LA. How are we introduced to Jeff? We don't see him struggling with rejection. Even though he lives in a garage and never has a job besides pecking away at his computer, there's never a moment where he appears to be struggling with money. Jeff himself opens things up in narration by telling us he's constantly meeting and bedding these gorgeous "angels". Jeff even has regular phone calls with his family and a dopey best friend in LA (Dash Mihok) to shoot hoops with, so it's not like he's isolated and alone. And the two first things the viewer sees Jeff do is pay for an abortion for a cute girl he got pregnant, then quickly fall into bed with another hot chick.
Why, in the name of Cecil B. DeMille, should I or anyone give a hot damn about this shallow construct named Jeff Romano? Unless you're an aspiring screenwriter in LA and are so beaten down with professional and personal rejection that you need to see a little wish fulfillment on screen, you shouldn't. Jeff Romano is an uninteresting guy living an unchallenging existence where his greatest burden is how all these beautiful women sex him up and then break his heart. Boo frickin' hoo. And just in case you're wondering, Jeff doesn't do anything the rest of the film to change that well earned indifference.
It's too bad because unlike most flicks where the non-entity main character is only the start of what's wrong, writer/director Joel Silverman didn't do a bad job filling things in around Jeff. The plot is about how he knocks up this fragile, New Age chick named Kelly (Rachel Blanchard) and decides to try and make a life with her and their kid, something that enrages Jeff's overly invested father Tony (Harvey Keitel) and creates this emotional tug of war with Jeff in the middle. And unlike Jeff, Kelly and Tony are legitimately engaging personas. Kelly had a bad childhood that's left her unable to have a normal relationship with a guy, even though he tries very hard. Tony is tortured by seeing the boy he loves more than life itself throwing his own life away on a foolish impulse. And it's not like Rachel Blanchard and Harvey Keitel are simply that much better than their roles. Both parts are relatively well written.
None of that matters, unfortunately, because they're two planets orbiting a dead sun. It also doesn't help matters than Silverman has this annoying habit of using these abrupt, 5 or 6 second long scenes as completely unnecessary segues. If I had cared one iota for Jeff Romano, Nailed might have been a nifty little family drama. Since Jeff could have been staked down in the desert, smeared with honey and eaten alive by ants without it bothering me a bit, I've got to tell you not to bother watching this film.
*BONK*
*BONK*
*BONK*
What's that sound? That's me banging my head against the wall after watching this movie. Why? Because it was the umpteenth time I've witnessed a writer/director making the same narcissistic mistake. It is an error so basic, so obvious and so fatal that I can't comprehend how it gets repeated in script after script, film after film. After all, there are roughly 18,347 books out there that teach people how to write screenplays. This isn't some mystery religion where no one knows how it's supposed to work. Yet this stupidly self-centered flaw is one of the most common problems in cinema, particularly in the work of writer/directors.
What's the trouble? Not giving the viewer a single, solitary reason to care what the bleep happens to the main character of the story. No reason to care who he is or what he wants. No reason to care if he lives or dies. The character doesn't do anything to attract anyone's interest. He doesn't say anything to draw anyone's sympathy. There's nothing about him, his personality or his situation that justifies a single second of anyone's attention. The audience is merely presented with this schmuck and it is assumed that they will care about him.
That's not how it works. The character has to do something to establish he's a good person. Or he has to be presented in a situation that can be identified with. Or he has to step on screen with an overtly comedic or dramatic or romantic persona that people instantly want to know more about. Or well, there's got to be something. You can't begin a motion picture by treating the viewer like a child in a Dickensian orphanage, handing them flavorless porridge and demanding that they eat it.
In Nailed, that tasteless gruel is Jeff Romano (Brad Rowe). He's an aspiring screenwriter who's left his close knit New York family behind to try and make it in LA. How are we introduced to Jeff? We don't see him struggling with rejection. Even though he lives in a garage and never has a job besides pecking away at his computer, there's never a moment where he appears to be struggling with money. Jeff himself opens things up in narration by telling us he's constantly meeting and bedding these gorgeous "angels". Jeff even has regular phone calls with his family and a dopey best friend in LA (Dash Mihok) to shoot hoops with, so it's not like he's isolated and alone. And the two first things the viewer sees Jeff do is pay for an abortion for a cute girl he got pregnant, then quickly fall into bed with another hot chick.
Why, in the name of Cecil B. DeMille, should I or anyone give a hot damn about this shallow construct named Jeff Romano? Unless you're an aspiring screenwriter in LA and are so beaten down with professional and personal rejection that you need to see a little wish fulfillment on screen, you shouldn't. Jeff Romano is an uninteresting guy living an unchallenging existence where his greatest burden is how all these beautiful women sex him up and then break his heart. Boo frickin' hoo. And just in case you're wondering, Jeff doesn't do anything the rest of the film to change that well earned indifference.
It's too bad because unlike most flicks where the non-entity main character is only the start of what's wrong, writer/director Joel Silverman didn't do a bad job filling things in around Jeff. The plot is about how he knocks up this fragile, New Age chick named Kelly (Rachel Blanchard) and decides to try and make a life with her and their kid, something that enrages Jeff's overly invested father Tony (Harvey Keitel) and creates this emotional tug of war with Jeff in the middle. And unlike Jeff, Kelly and Tony are legitimately engaging personas. Kelly had a bad childhood that's left her unable to have a normal relationship with a guy, even though he tries very hard. Tony is tortured by seeing the boy he loves more than life itself throwing his own life away on a foolish impulse. And it's not like Rachel Blanchard and Harvey Keitel are simply that much better than their roles. Both parts are relatively well written.
None of that matters, unfortunately, because they're two planets orbiting a dead sun. It also doesn't help matters than Silverman has this annoying habit of using these abrupt, 5 or 6 second long scenes as completely unnecessary segues. If I had cared one iota for Jeff Romano, Nailed might have been a nifty little family drama. Since Jeff could have been staked down in the desert, smeared with honey and eaten alive by ants without it bothering me a bit, I've got to tell you not to bother watching this film.