Awful Nice (2013)

Wonderful character development!

Too much of everything

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

Imagine Step Brothers meets Mouse Hunt; that's Awful Nice.Sibling rivalries are ripe territory for comedies. It's the sort of situation where years-long resentments boil over and make a general mess of things. It's funny because it's family, and it's more spiteful because it's family, and there's just a bit of sadness in there too (since it's family).There's an example of this early on in Awful Nice. Jim (James Pumphrey) and Dave (Alex Rennie) are the squabbling siblings in question. They're having dinner with family following their dad's funeral. After a toast, Jim and Dave sip their champagne. They they eye each other, they realize that they're inexplicably trying to gulp their champagne faster. The champagne done, they each pick up their glasses of beer. Then the water. The race continues with a gravy boat. And then they try to beat the s**t out of each other as their relatives look on shocked. (There's an Alonzo Mourning rookie card involved in this too, one that I may have in a box somewhere.)These kinds of absurd escalations into slapstick (and cartoon violence) are what Awful Nice does Best. That isn't to say it's dialog driven humor isn't spot on as well. There's a certain quickness to the back and forths between the two brothers in this movie that reminds me of Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn in Swingers. The dialogue comes fast, the insults and jabs arrive quicker, and there's a sense of personality that arises from comic beat to comic beat.Beyond the verbal and physical comedy in Awful Nice, there's a good knack for little details and sight gags. There's the pet tarantula in the opening scene which helps lend an extra layer of sordidness to what Dave's life in the tepee must have been like. A later throwaway moment involving Tabasco sauce also builds a sense of rough-and-tumble history. In the background in an office scene, there's a piece of art featuring a bear driving a speedboat. Awful Nice shoots from gag to gag rapidly, which makes the movie breeze by, but the last third feels like it's maybe lacking something toward the end. It's not bad and it thankfully doesn't become sentimental in an unearned way. They could have easily gone there, but the movie is resistant to such easy, feel-good moments that would undermine the bitterness of it's main relationship. I think that's admirable, actually, since it'd be easy to go for some easy emotional beat and wrap up the film with a bow.But the resolution does come a little too easy and it's not as satisfying as everything that leads up to it. In some ways what happens is telegraphed well in advance, and for a film where the jokes seem to come out of nowhere, something that I could see coming feels a bit disappointing. In that respect, I wish the plot was treated more like the jokes in the film, that there'd be a sense of surprise to both the set-up and the punchline.And yet I can't completely hold this movie's faults against it, since it did it's job as a comedy and as a story. It made me laugh throughout, and it made me care about the characters, and ultimately, that's what matters. I highly recommend giving this movie a spin at your local Netflix.

I saw this at the Alamo and thought it was the funniest movie of the whole festival, and maybe one of the funniest I've seen in the past few years. The big laughs come from the physical comedy, but there's a lot of subtle humor in the dialog and the characters too that I only started to pick up on towards the middle of the movie. Kind of made me feel like I'd catch more the 2nd time around, but this was the last screening of it at SXSW, so I guess I'll wait 'til it gets released. There were some lulls in the middle and the story arc goes from 0-60 a little too quick at the end, but these are minor complaints that only keep it from being a perfect movie. And most movies are not perfect, especially comedies, and ESPECIALLY extremely funny ones. Like Tommy Boy and Billy Madison aside, there are no perfect comedies in the last 20 years. And this movie felt like Tommy Boy got into a car accident with Sideways. And in a good way. I loved it.

Far from perfect, but easily one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. Seriously so funny. Who is Alex Rennie and somebody get this kid a TV show. He is on fire throughout this whole movie. I was non-stop laughing out loud from start to finish. So many good gags and so many funny lines. "We'll put it on our tab. Or we'll get a tab going, and then we'll put it on the tab" (after breaking a chair). "That bat had like pine-tar on it or something" (after breaking a window). I could go on but I'd be ruining the movie. And all of the supporting characters were real funny too. Although I wasn't a fan of a lot of the costuming and make-up. And it wasn't that it was too low budget or anything, it just kind of seemed too loud and cartoonish with a lot of the characters. Might be a little too absurd for most people, but I just went with it and am glad I did because it paid off time and time again. In fact, that's pretty much how the whole movie went. After about 15-20 minutes in, it starts to get a little crazy, and you just have to go with it, because the laughs are a mile a minute if you do. Definitely catch this movie if you can. It's the funniest.

I don't know what the heck Todd Sklar was thinking when he wrote this film. I guess the best way that I can describe it is as a crazy dramatic comedy. While I was watching this film I kept thinking to myself, whose crazy family is this film based on? Hopefully no ones, because there were times that I thought these two brothers were going to kill each other. Dave (Alex Rennie) is the carefree younger brother who is homeless and is used to eating out of trash cans and seems to like his life just the way it is. He is really disgusting and does some outlandish crap (use expletive here). His older brother Jim (James Pumphrey) hunts Dave down because their father has died and they discover that they have inherited a cabin in Branson Missouri. A road trip ensues and the two of them hit the road. It turns out that the cabin is a total wreck and Dave decides that this would be a great brother bonding experience if they fixed up the cabin together instead of hiring someone else to do it. I was thinking that at this point in the film that Jim was the sane one since he has a family and a child; but that is not the case. For some reason (I think that it is guilt), Jim keeps doing whatever the heck his crazy brother Dave wants him to do. I just kept shaking my head. I don't care how much I may have ignored a sibling in the past there is no way that I would do some of the stupid stuff that these two do. At one point Dave swallows a handful of dog pills and I just knew that he would be dead in the next scene, but nope. The deceased father's business partner, Jon (Christopher Meloni) was responsible for handling the legalities for these two idiots. At first I thought that he might be nuts too, but it turns out that he was the smartest one on the screen. I almost didn't recognize Christopher because the wig and disguise he was wearing was so terrible. I guess the budget was not that big in the costume department. Anyway, although I laughed a whole lot in this film after it was over, I was just left blank. Like Emma, I am not sure what the title Awful Nice meant; but it is what it is.