Big Nothing
Jean-Baptiste Andrea

Lily Einhorn
posted 1 December 2006

'In the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed dwarf is king'. Yeah, and I'm rubber, you're glue, and… Oh, never mind. This is a film full of such assertions. Quick draw nonsense that in turns serves as wry amusement, clever pastiche, and slightly irritating pop psychology.

The plot is fairly simple. Charles - dissatisfied, poor - teams up with Gus - con artist, chancer - and Gus's ex-girlfriend, Josie - young, fiery. The three embark on Gus's plan to blackmail a priest with records of his underage porn-site habit, into giving them $100,000. So far so hapless. Just why Charles so readily abandons his comfortable suburban lifestyle, his pink flamingo mailbox and happily gambolling child, is anybody's guess. It may be because - shock horror - said child has to be kitted out in second hand clothes. It may be because - sharp intake of breath - his wife earns more than he does. Or could it be because working in a call centre, day after day, year after year, no job prospects, no education, has sapped his strength, his will to live, his very essence? Actually, he is highly educated, waiting to hear back from publishers about his new book, and works in the call centre for just one call before an accident with the 'hold' button lands him straight back in the clapped out old car from whence he came.

The dissatisfaction is understandable, the boredom is justified. What is slightly beyond the realms of normal behaviour is that Charles is so easily and quickly sucked into an ill-fated heist involving fraud and blackmail - with a man he has just met, and a cheerfully psychotic young woman you would probably stand in a rain soaked gutter to avoid - when he is happily married to a police officer.

But then, not a lot in this film falls within the bounds of normal behaviour. Fast editing, split screens and graphics - fantasies becoming tiny comic book gobbets - mark it out as inventive and stylish, but the narrative and characters just aren't as fully formed as the design. The question you really have to ask yourself when watching a film about a make-or-break, one-night-only stunt, is: do you care if it succeeds? Are you rooting for the good guys? Are you rooting for the comedy double act? Are you rooting for the cheerful psychotic or the unbalanced con artist? Are you rooting for the dissatisfied husband? Are you, really, rooting for anyone?

Twist after fanciful twist give the characters plenty to grapple with, and the actors (even David 'Friends' Schwimmer) give credible performances as hapless crooks, turned pros, turned hapless crooks. Simon Pegg has an admirable American accent and has managed to leave the zombies behind him, if not the schlock-horror, while Alice Eve has enough of the dirty ingénue to remain at once innocent and very much in control. Of course. But the film just doesn't have enough heart to make it any more than fairly mindless black comedy that leaves a slightly bitter taste. Lemony.

And like a good lemon, which is tempered by a fine sprinkling of caster sugar (make mine fair trade), black comedy can be as bleak and vile and distasteful as it very well pleases, if it gives you a reason to wipe that grimace of your face. Laurel needed Hardy, the fire superintendent needed Chaplin, lemons need sugar, and Big Nothing needs a person who you want to root for. It needs soul.

The film has some great comic touches and witty allusions to posturing movies past. Gus gauges Charles's commitment to the plan by offering him a red M&M, or a blue M&M, and the debt owed to films such as Naked Gun, Death Becomes Her, The Man with Two Brains and A Life Less Ordinary is evident in the shlock horror slapstick and refusal to take itself too seriously. This is by no means a bad film, but it's no comedy classic, and drifts happily from the mind as you struggle to put your hands through your coat sleeves in the darkness wondering if you've missed the last tube.

And that's its problem. For all its art and artifice, it feels lazy - the basics are not credible enough to let the outlandish really take flight, so Charles's eventual reasoning for his night of madness feels like an excuse, not a catalyst; a writer's apology for a character that is two dimensional. Still, if axes through the head, death-by-lollipop, and accidental drowning in sewage are your thing, then enjoy. I would rather float my boat serenely on a cup of Horlicks.