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DVD Sunny Side Up
 Run time: 78 min Rating: 3.7 Genres: Comedy Director: Derek Estlin Purvis Writers: Christy Scott Cashman Stars: Parker Posey, Kathryn Erbe, Jay Harrington |
| Storyline A chicken farmer from middle America wins a vacation for having the “Best Chicken”. When Millie arrives at the new-age retreat, she meets lifestyle guru Angelica Lovecraft and her reality TV show producers. Before she knows it, she has accepted their lucrative offer and they arrive at her farm for a week of reality TV programming. While Millie is awfully excited about the show, her husband is much less enthusiastic, the producers are getting antsy and Angelica is getting dramatic. They’re going to turn Millie’s life, and her chicken farm, upside down. Written by napierslogs |
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| Plot Keywords: chicken, farm, chicken farm, middle america, new age | |
| Details: Country: USA Release Date: 19 June 2012 (USA) |
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DVD Sunny Side Up
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4 comments
It's always good to see Parker Posey, she's a solid actor and an excellent comedian. And Kathryn Erbe steps up in this one too. Then there's Jay Harrington (which made me shed yet another tear for Ted).
Despite those strengths, the movie isn't quite up to snuff. Posey does a nice job and she can skewer Hollywood's vain actors like nobody else. But the main plot seems to move along in completely different lane from Posey's. The flick saunters along almost like an old style Disney Sunday movie. There's nothing wrong with that except for the fact that they've got Parker doing doughnuts around it. The two don't mesh easily and the finale is, well let's just say, inexcusable.
Needless to say, I was disappointed. Not because I'm a Parker Posey fan and this one didn't pan out. The problem was, the actual movie was a bit of a wet blanket… so much so that it didn't have the brains to make use of Jay and Katheryn properly.
But what do I know, maybe I missed the point and it was merely a cash grab – considering all the credits at the beginning went to the producers.
Being a fan of Parker Posey from the hilarious Christopher Guest reality films "Waiting for Guffman", "Best in Show" and "A Mighty Wind", I figured I'd like this film. It had a similar Guestian approach, taking the guise of a documentary that satirizes some exceptionally kooky characters (Posey's taking the kooky cake), but somehow it was a letdown.
Being something of a hippie myself, I love seeing spoofs of hippie characters, like Michael Shannon in "Grand Theft Parsons", or half the cast of Peter Sellers' "The Party". Here, Posey did a good job, but I feel like she didn't have enough good biting lines, and instead she had to rely on general goofy expressions, big arm movements and slapstick for the role. Only 1 or 2 funny lines stick out (like when she takes the camera crew to the dock to meet Millie's husband and says, "now we're going to visit Millie's husband who is working. He's a lobster MURDERER.") I got a laugh out of that delivery. But other than that, I felt like I was constantly waiting for Parker to deliver a good zinger that never came.
The other characters were far too straight-laced to be of much interest, and the story itself was rather uneventful. Oddly enough, the main thing I got out of this movie was not entertainment, but rather the social message that warehoused chickens are abused & tortured, and we should each do our best to support free-range chicken farms, or not buy eggs at all. That itself is a worthy accomplishment of this film, but I just wish there was more entertainment value.
If you want a full dose of Parker Posey's comedic talents, check out the Christopher Guest films I listed above. "The Love Guide" is an OK film to watch on a lazy afternoon, but it didn't really tickle me the way I hoped it would.
If there was a message in this movie, it was totally lost on me. I really liked the concept of "chicken farmer goes free-range" but the implementation (bunch of coops set on a pasture) was ill-conceived and poorly executed. Just a little research (hey! google it!) on the topic of "chicken farming" could have made this movie considerably better.
Millie places a number of coops on a pasture (evidently without securing these small structures to the planet) and they get hammered by a storm. What was the point of this?
Guru follower builds a small scale model of the chicken farm and blows on it. Following day, Millie comes home to find her farm devastated by high winds. What was the point of this? If it was to allude to a cosmic connection between the guru groupie and mother nature, it fell flat. There was virtually no character development for this guy.
I can't help but feel something was lost on the cutting room floor as there is no substance to the film. Throw in a sub-plot of Millie's husband having a suspicious rendezvous with a beautiful blonde only to have it resolved with zero passion and a minimum of dialogue and I'm left wondering why I spent any time at all on this movie.
Let's say that:
1)You adore Parker Posey and have set yourself a goal to watch every movie she makes; 2) Hippie caricatures, no matter how diluted, always give you a chuckle; 3) No subject matter is too trivial for you; 4) Zaniness for the sake of zaniness, even without context or continuity, is AOK with you; 5) Most importantly, you have gone to the library to borrow a movie and this is the only movie available that you haven't already seen or affirmatively don't want to see.
If your answer to all these questions is a resounding "YES" then please watch this movie.