Entertainment

A mistanthropic, depressed middle-aged comedian (Gregg Turkington) plays a series of shows through the Mojave desert and finds crowds hostile to him at every turn.

I’m in a bit of a dark place myself at the moment and it’s hard to tell whether Entertainment was the best or worst thing I could have chosen to watch at this point in time. It’s a bleak portrait of a man who screams into the void and hears nothing back. He’s lost in the wilderness, bouncing between public toilets and seedy bars looking for laughs and trying to get his daughter to phone him.

So in my case I guess things could be worse.

Anyway Entertainment is a kind of anti-comedy that didn’t really appeal to me and yet I couldn’t stop watching. I didn’t see the funny side but I found solace in this man’s misery and weirdly enough I’m out somewhat out of my funk.

So thanks, Rick Alverson, for this uplifting tonic for the soul.