When a film has been delayed for several years, it doesn’t have to be a bad sign. Sure, more often than not you have a situation like the recent “Jane Got A Gun” or “Serena” or “Nailed”/“Accidental Love,” a film with a troubled production, disavowed by key personnel, recut by financiers and eventually dumped by distributors at a quiet time of year in the hope of making a quick buck, normally because the film is lousy and it’s the only thing to do. But very occasionally you’ll get something like “Margaret” or “Cabin In The Woods,” a film where fate, circumstance, legal issues or producers who just don’t get it means that a terrific movie languishes in a vault before eventually being rescued and discovered.
“Search Party” is a movie that shot back in 2013, before two of its three leads made their name on an acclaimed HBO comedy. It’s been released in much of the world — France at the end of 2014, U.K. last summer — but in the U.S., it only escaped Universal’s vault today, getting a limited release courtesy of Focus World. And sadly, it’s more of a “Jane Got A Gun” than a “Margaret,” if you know what I mean.
As the film opens, Nardo (Thomas Middleditch of “Silicon Valley,” and yes, this is exactly the kind of film where a character is called “Nardo”) is about to be married to his fiancée Tracy (Shannon Woodward, late of “Raising Hope”). At his bachelor party, which involves smoking weed in a van, he confesses to his buddies and roommates, amiable straight man Evan (Adam Pally of “Happy Endings” and “The Mindy Project”) and liability Jason (T.J. Miller, also of “Silicon Valley”) that he has reservations.
Jason takes these reservations seriously, and interrupts the wedding to prevent his friend from making a mistake and Tracy, understandably, leaves him. Weeks later, he gets a phone call: Nardo had gone to Mexico in search of his former fiancée, but has been robbed, and ends up stranded, naked and alone. Jason grabs Evan (who has both a big meeting the next day, and an attractive co-worker, in the shape of Alison Brie, he’s too afraid to ask out), and they head south to rescue their pal.
The film marks the directorial debut of Scot Armstrong, Todd Phillips’ writing partner on “Road Trip,” “Old School” and “The Hangover: Part II,” and it’s fair to say that it’s very much in the mold of those films, and the latter franchise in particular: bros searching for a bro with booze, drugs and scantily clad women on the agenda. Even the archetypes of the three leads feels familiar: Middleditch as Ed Helms/Jason Bateman, Pally as Bradley Cooper/Jason Sudeikis, Miller as Zach Galafianakis/Charlie Day (and women mostly as objects, who nag to various degrees).
Even those of us who aren’t fans of a “Hangover” or a “Horrible Bosses” pic would agree that the comparison doesn’t flatter “Search Party.” The leads are all talented, and do what they can. Pally in particular makes a good case for himself as a leading man, while Miller and Middleditch are game, especially the latter, who spends half the film doing a Jason-Segel-at-the-beginning-of-“Forgetting-Sarah-Marshall“. But their presence mostly reminds you of their better work, particularly given how well Middleditch and Miller play off against each other in “Silicon Valley.”
Plenty of other faces familiar from TV comedies turn up as well, from “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star JB Smoove and “Girls” actor Jon Glaser to Jason Mantzoukas and Krysten Ritter as a magician and his conwoman girlfriend who lead the closest the film gets to a successful comic set piece. Even then, though, everyone’s playing the material at full blast, shouty and screamy and generally noisy. At one point, Middleditch ends up literally covered in cocaine and completely off his face, but it oddly seems to make little difference, so cokey is the energy of the rest of the film (and that’s not a compliment).
Given how good the cast often are elsewhere, it doesn’t seem unfair to put this at Armstrong’s door, and the film has a very first-time-director feel to it. Particularly in the early stages, where scenes drag on interminably, it has the baggy, bloated feel of the extended DVD cut of a second-tier Judd Apatow or Adam McKay joint, where the actors were allowed to improv a little too long. But given how much filler remains in the film, how little plot is gotten through, and the brief 95 minute running time, you wonder if they simply didn’t shoot enough material.
For this kind of movie, it doesn’t look too bad, with cinematography coming courtesy of David Gordon Green’s DP Tim Orr. And there’s a handful of laughs in the film, even if they are sparsely spaced. But in its sitcom-like fratty humor, its waste of talented female performers on humorless, underwritten roles, in its Trump-ish depiction of Mexicans as either drug dealers, corrupt cops or thieves, in its sheer laziness and lack of originality, it feels like a throwback less to 2013 than to the 1990s. [D]
