Humpday, a mumblecore manifesto on identity and maturity, isn’t for everyone, but doesn’t shy away from two men’s identity crises.
The plot of Humpday is the stuff of screwball ‘bromance’ comedy. Ben (Mark Duplass) and Andrew (Joshua Leonard), two straight male friends, drunkenly resolve to enter a sex tape of them into an amateur pornography competition.
This isn’t the movie to see if you want to laugh at straight men acting fey and kissing each other while exaggeratedly hiding their ridiculous plot from a judgmental society.
Instead, this is a film that examines how the pornography competition unleashes a tempest in both men’s lives by forcing them to evaluate their priorities.
Straight-laced Ben is troubled by his fascination with the competition and isn’t sure how to explain the odd situation to his conservative wife.
Andrew, who dropped out of college and wandered around the world for years, becomes intimidated by his resolution and wonders if he isn’t the open-minded artist he thought he was.
The beautiful part of Humpday is that all this tension is shown, not spoken. There isn’t a single point where any character explicitly vocalizes what they’re actually worried about; instead, we learn about the conflict through the men’s obsession and discussion about the competition.
Humpday lingers on drawn-out, sincere conversations between the characters. Humpday doesn’t shy away from showing the characters engaging in five-minute, real-time exchanges of dialogue, nervous laughter or poignant glances. A more timid movie would have conveyed awkward moments with second-long glances punctuated by the right music chord or perhaps the folk ballad of some featured indie artist.
The unorthodox cinematography of Humpday enriches the experience. The film explores two men who don’t understand themselves.
There is no way this relationship could have been explored without a rambling script, long still shots and sincere shaky-cam zooms of anxious people laughing and talking to each other.
The movie sounds like an ordeal, but watching the performances is bliss. Leonard fits the look of a scraggly-haired, confused 20-something perfectly, and he completely nails the anxiety of an artist who has nothing to boast except successfully running away from commitment.
Duplass dominates the screen as an everyman whom you probably have met countless times on campus or at a bar or party.
If the drawnout conversations become too much to handle, pay attention to the minute control the actors exercise over their facial expressions and body language.
Duplass and Leonard portray their characters’ bromance with total sincerity, and viewers will enjoy seeing their male friends in the duo’s roughhousing and caustic humor.
While the movie’s obsession with picking apart the characters’ neuroses through extremely-sincere, indulgent performances tests many viewers’ patience, Humpday will please anyone ready for an introspective flick on identity.
‘
Humpday
Rating: R
Starring: Mark Duplass, Joshua Leonard.
Verdict: Not your typical bromance.
