Wrong (Quentin Dupieux, 2013)

I can only hope I don't see a worse, uglier more self-congratulatory disaster this year than Quentin Dupieux's Wrong, his latest exercise in lead-weight unfunniness masked as pseudo-surrealism. Perhaps, like Cronenberg's perverse use of digital in Cosmopolis, the smeary video gloss, alienating movement and jolting editing is meant to be an intentional corruption of visual expectations. But Dupieux is no Cronenberg, and his own surreal vision of a soulless, capitalistic society is put forward only in laughably out-of-date workplace satire spiced up by rain falling on toiling workers. Har har. Only William Fichtner escapes from this unscathed, primarily because he cannot get through his lines fast enough in order to walk out of his one real scene. Everyone else, sadly, lets every plodding word hang in the air, hoping if they leave it there long enough, Dupieux's banal, cynical jabs may cocoon and subsequently emerge actual jokes.

My full review is up now at Movie Mezzanine.