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| Image Courtesy of StudioCanal |
The 2020s have produced so many solid satires, but it has also produced some lackluster ones. Last year’s Rumours was a political satire with the potential to really take aim at the trend of politicians showing themselves to be more inept and all-too-human. Instead, it used more generic humor and plotting to become a dull and inconsequential film.
The film’s potential lies in its stacked cast, which makes you wonder if the budget was blown on actor salaries instead of a more specific script. The top talents all play different world leaders who gather at a G7 summit in Germany to write a response to some global crisis.
Cate Blanchett plays German leader Hilda Ortman, who hosts the group at a secluded castle. Charles Dance (Game of Thrones) plays American president Edison Wolcott, who has a suspiciously British accent. Denis Ménochet (Inglourious Basterds) represents France, Takehiro Hira (Shogun, Girl/Haji) Japan, and Nikki Amuka-Bird (Knock At The Cabin) Great Britain. Also along for the ride are Roland Ravello, Alicia Vikander, Roy Dupuis, and Zlatko Boric (Triangle of Sadness).
All these actors sit in a gazebo surrounded by a green screen and try to make use of a bland script. The world crisis they’re supposed to be responding to is never specified. Using a generic, but unspecified event can work in keeping viewers focused on the actors and or plot, but here it prevents the satire from having a solid basis. It’s hard to make fun of something when that thing is ill-defined.
Some sort of apocalyptic event happens while the group is having dinner and trying to write the G7 conference’s unilateral response statement. Viewers aren’t given any kind of explanation for what happens, so it’s unclear what these international leaders have to respond to. Any sort of specificity here could have propped up the character’s responses better and made the film more engaging.
There are some small laughs (or maybe just chuckles) spread throughout: one bit of slapstick humor and a long-running joke that involves Alicia Vikander’s character speaking Swedish. There’s also a crude (and literal) metaphor that can sum up what the film’s three directors (Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson, Guy Maddin) might be trying to say about politicians. But, again, it’s pretty general.
Had the film been more specific with its characters, its inciting incident, what the characters were responding to, or really with anything, this could have been the latest political satire to give us all a good distraction from current events.
- Eric Beach