Saturday, October 8, 2016

Quincy Rose's anti-rom-com, FRIENDS EFFING FRIENDS EFFING FRIENDS, arrives on VOD


Directed with a certain in-your-face style but written with dialog that sounds like something midway between a so-so self-help manual and the babblings of some not-very-bright, early-middle-aged characters who should know better, FRIENDS EFFING FRIENDS EFFING FRIENDS (a terrible title -- too long and unnecessarily euphemistic -- I will herewith refer to it as FeFeF) is the latest film from one, Quincy Rose, shown below.

Mr. Rose, the press release tells us, is the godson of Woody Allen and the son of comic writer, Mickey Rose. On the basis of this, the only film of his that TrustMovies has seen, I would have to say that the apple has not only fallen far from the tree, it had landed on another continent.

After listening to the really tiresome banter the movie's five characters indulge in scene after scene, I found myself wondering, Is this supposed to be satire? If so, of what and by whom?

Yes, yes, I know: We are all of us fallible hypocrites. But these people are so clueless in so many ways that their tiresome talk does not produce laughs or warmth or sadness or much of anything except a kind of burgeoning impatience.

The characters -- given to playing musical beds: a twosome here, a threesome there -- talk and talk and talk about it all, but without much wit and certainly no perspicacity. The most annoying character, Jacob (because he revels in giving advice and appearing sage), is portrayed by Tyler Dawson (of Bellflower), shown below, who does a good job playing a bad guy.

His BFF, however, is played by Graham Skipper -- yes, the same actor (shown below, left) who has graced a couple of recent horror items: Almost Human and The Mind's Eye. Mr. Skipper can put his hyper/bug-eyed acting style to pretty fair use in those scary movies, but it does not translate all that well to comedy or romance -- both of which I suspect Mr. Rose is trying to achieve here.

The three female cast members, all much more physically and facially attractive that the two males on view, include Christina Gooding (below and bottom, left), Vanessa Dubasso (below, second from right), and Jillian Leigh (below, right). All are very pretty and do as well as these highly circumscribed roles allow. Truth be told, we don't much like any of these people. But is this really the filmmaker's intention?

On one hand Rose would seem to be making a plea for more honesty and open relationships. On the other, his movie reads like a treatise against all this. In any case these are among the most annoying characters you will have met in a movie in this new millennium. Is there really nothing new -- or intelligent or entertaining -- to say or show about sex and love and relationships and three-ways? On the basis of FeFeF, it would seem not.

From Gravitas Ventures and running a thankfully brief 77 minutes, the movie hits VOD this coming Tuesday, October 11.

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