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Joshy
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Lionsgate Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (12th December 2016). |
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The Film
 Four months after the abrupt end of his engagement brought about by his fiancιe Rachel's (an odd cameo by Community's Alison Brie) suicide Joshy (Silicon Valley's Thomas Middleditch) has invited his friends to take advantage of the house they rented for his bachelor party since the deposit is nonrefundable. The turnout is rather uninspiring, consisting of suburban dad Ari (The Mindy Project's Adam Pally), buzzkill business partner Adam (Queen of Earth writer/director Alex Ross Perry), and one of Joshy's apartment building acquaintances Eric (Adult Beginners' Nick Kroll); but each has their own ideas about how to get Joshy through this difficult time, each by way of avoiding the issue. Having been dumped by his girlfriend of ten years for being "too clingy" and blamed for her believing she has missed her twenties, Adam hopes to bond with Joshy by involving the group in the extremely complicated role player game "Mecha Dungeon Crawl" that the two had crowdfunded. Feeling stifled by his suburban family life, Ari just wants to get high with Joshy and hang around in the hot tub. The self-designated fun guy, Eric is treating this like a boys' weekend and breaks out his bag of tricks, including wild man Greg (Blunt Talk's Brett Gelman), gambling, drugs, hookers, sex workers, and offering up his "bonanza hole" as a bullseye for target practice. With Joshy proving extremely adaptable to the plans of whoever manages to dominate the successive evenings, it is easy for the others to become distracted or focus on their own pursuits and discoveries. Ari's flirtation with "birthday girl" Jodi (Obvious Child's Jenny Slate) with whom he shares memories of the same Jewish summer camp turns serious enough for him to consider separating from his wife, Adam resists Eric's attempts to get him laid (if only to keep him from bringing everyone down), while Greg's experimentation with hallucinogenic mushrooms has him spilling out the massive professional and personal screw-up he has been trying to mask with drugs and partying. Joshy, however, is only able to avoid confronting his feelings for so long with the attempted intervention of late arrival Aaron (Kissing on the Mouth's Joe Swanberg) who makes the mistake of bringing his wife (Hannah Takes the Stairs' Kris Swanberg) and son (Uncle Kent 2's Jude Swanberg) along and continued persecution from Rachel's parents (Mad About You's Paul Reiser and House M.D.'s Lisa Edelstein) who are still unable to accept her suicide. Although certainly never meant to be an indie mumblecore answer to The Hangover series, Joshy the tagline of which "Wedding's off. Party's on" does not even hint at the darker aspects of the story nevertheless is not as outrageous as expected and feels safer than it should as an examination of male friendships, self-interest, and men dealing with difficult emotions. The emotional turns are predictable and the structure made transparent by the actors improvising off of a seventeen-page outline, dictating the narrative trajectory as a need to get from plot point to plot point rather than growing out of the improvisation or crafted by a more fleshed-out and developed screenplay. The film is not without its fine points, including a nice turn from Slate, and Middleditch providing some moving dramatics after being so deliberately sidelined for much of the film. The cast also includes brief appearances seeming like favors from a "six degrees of " selection of comedic actors including Parks and Recreation's Aubrey Plaza, The New Girl's Jake Johnson, Parenthood's Lauren Graham, and About a Boy writer Paul Weitz. 
Video
Shot with the Arri Alexa, the film as represented in LionsGate's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.40:1 widescreen encode sports crisp close-ups and detail (especially in the exterior day scenes) but does not exactly wow the viewer with an HD experience thanks to the privileging of performance over perfect shots, with the art-directed interiors and exteriors treated as mere backdrops. 
Audio
The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is fairly restrained with surround activity limited largely to atmosphere with prominence given to the front channels for dialogue, effects, and the film's scoring and source music. Optional English, English SDH, and Spanish subtitles are included. 
Extras
The sole extra is an Audio Commentary by writer/director Jeff Baena, producer/actor Adam Pally and actor Thomas Middleditch in which Baena and Pally discuss the origins of the project - including early interest by American Zoetrope - the resulting seventeen-page script (an outline for improvisation), and the elements that make it the "Jewiest" project they have worked on as yet. Baena also comments on the various ways he attempted in the script and stylistically to subvert the expectations of a comedy audience (including how Graham's unavailability changed the direction of part of the plot). Middleditch discusses with his fellow commentators the marginalizing of his character for much of the running time, but the actor also reveals a sense of humor edgy enough to keep up with Pally. They also reveal that the "Mecha Dungeon Crawl" game was indeed a real game designed by script supervisor Catherine Scholz's boyfriend. 
Overall
Although certainly never meant to be an indie mumblecore answer to The Hangover series, Joshy the tagline of which "Wedding's off. Party's on" does not even hint at the darker aspects of the story nevertheless is not as outrageous as expected and feels safer than it should.
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