Photo: Stavros Halkias via YouTube

Let’s Start a Cult It opens with grainy footage of members of a suicide cult being interviewed about why they believe they are “ready to transcend.” One by one, they tell their off-camera leader, William (Wes Haney), the profound lessons they’ve learned from him as they prepare for their big day. “This tree we’re on is on fire and it’s telling us to get off,” one of them says stoically. “I know in my heart we need to be so much more,” says another. Cut to Chip, played by the comedian Stavros Halkias“Thanks to your teachings, I convinced the Chinese woman with dementia that I was her son,” he says, his Baltimore accent dead on. “I actually got about $13,000 from him before I realized I didn’t know how to speak Mandarin; I was just doing the sounds. At the bottom of the screen, the recording states the date of the interview as May 24, 2000.

If this were a faithful period piece, Chip would do a colorless impersonation of this woman rather than just saying she’s doing the “voices,” but her dirty irreverence still serves as a throwback to the comedy movies of that era. Let’s Start a Cult Shares some DNA with 2004’s dodgeball with its bird-brained plan that combines a rabble and 2004’s Napoleon Dynamite in that its comedy flows freely from the antics of the losing characters. There’s even a comedic sex scene like the 2000s Journey or 1999s American Pie. Like the character-based comedies that were popular before Judd Apatow’s humanist stories influenced nearly every comedy movie he got greenlit, this is extremely stupid before the industry’s turning point when even those movies were halted in production.

Directed by Ben Kitnick, who co-wrote the film’s plot with Halkias and Haney. Let’s Start a Cult He’s furry by design: Disturbed by his disgusting behavior, Chip’s cult performs the poison ritual without him; This sets off a series of events in which a defeated Chip returns to his parents’ house, only to find that William is still alive and in the news. He runs from the law, tracks her down, and blackmails her into helping him start a new cult. Their subsequent journey to recruit new members, which constitutes the bulk of the film, is little more than an excuse to introduce a gang of lovable oddballs and drop them into various environments where they can share loosely improvised dialogue and crack jokes.

So we end up in the apartment of rejected military hopeful Tyler (Eric Rahill); William correctly guesses that she is a vulnerable target to recruit; While Chip and Tyler play Nintendo 64, Tyler’s non-fiancee, played by Zuri Salahuddin (“You can’t call someone your fiancee if they say no!”), makes a cameo and engages in loud, animalistic sex. Joe Pera in the next room. At the same time, we are reminded of a slow-motion montage. gas station scene zoolander Chip, William, Tyler and new cult member Diane (Katy Fullan) paint a car with house paint; It ends with Chip capriciously throwing a bucket of paint into William’s eye, nearly blinding him. How Another Are they supposed to hide their cars from the cops other than casually and conspicuously painting them baby blue?

At the center of everything is Halkias Chip; he lives up to all his merits, infusing each delivery with the perfect mix of cool man-child gruffness and wounded ego. In one scene, he tries to reiterate the obvious lie he told his parents to explain why he disappeared from their lives to join a cult: “Mom, last time I was in Tokyo training to become a karate champion, but the day before the Grand championship my sensei betrayed me and my beautiful girlfriend Akiko” He stole. I was too heartbroken to fight and that’s why I lost! Does no one listen to me in this house?!” In another scene, he raves about the outcome of a professional wrestling match from 19 years ago, exclaiming, “God, that thing was rigged!” he complains.

When watching Halkias perform, you don’t have to squint too hard to see echoes of it. Danny McBridewhose work is an obvious reference point in Chip’s production. like Fred Simmons Foot Fist PathChip’s misguided bluster serves as a subtle commentary on the absurdities of masculinity, and none of his stabs at charisma are successful enough to make you miss the fact that the joke is about him. (The same can’t be said for the comedy in Shane Gillis’ Netflix sitcom tiresHalkias also appeared this year.) But there’s also a poignancy to the character that makes this sickening deal easier to stomach. Sometimes he’s just a blowhard kid, but more often than not he’s acting out of insecurity, an inability to process his emotions, or a desperate desire for connection. That’s why the film’s ending, with Chip finding a loving home with the cult members he’s newly befriended, carries such heartfelt heart. Even if you don’t want to hang out with this guy, it’s nice to see him win.

in 2018 MasterClassApatow discussed the value of writing comedy as drama, Later working backwards to introduce jokes. “There’s really no use in thinking of these stories as comedy stories,” he said. “The problem with many comedies is that they primarily serve a comedy premise and have no reason to actually exist.” His films have been constantly criticized for being too long and ambitious. Let’s Start a Cult, Meanwhile, he takes the opposite approach: He starts with a funny premise, then backtracks to introduce the drama. There’s no reason for it to exist other than as a joke tool, and it’s all the better for it.