BEFORE: It's Black Friday, and if you want to get trampled while fighting over Christmas gifts in a mall somewhere today, more power to you. But I'll celebrate my "Jack Black Friday" my way, with the last film in his chain - that's FIVE in a row, so he's definitely making the year-end countdown, which I'm in the middle of tallying up now, even though I still have three films to watch.
I haven't watched anything on Netflix in a while, not since clearing all those rockumentaries from my list, then a couple of Paul Rudd films to get me back on track. But I've got to try and get to the important Netflix films in January, because who knows when they'll start disappearing off that service? I'm taking a chance just by waiting that long. Plus I should probably take a spin through the new releases there to see if there's anything new I want to add to my list, like that "Ballad of Buster Scruggs" film.
After this comes a Christmas movie, so I'm on break until, let's say mid-December. I need to finally re-organize some comic books, make a Christmas gift list, and figure out what my theme's going to be for my holiday mix CD. So I'll still have a lot to do, even if I'm not watching movies for a few weeks. Time at the end of the year always seems to go by much more quickly, so I can't just stop and take a break, not until we're in the car driving up to Massachusetts.
THE PLOT: Local Pennsylvanian polka legend Jan Lewan develops a plan to get rich that shocks his fans and lands him in jail.
AFTER: It's clear that Jack Black wants to be known for his character work, and sometimes that's a positive, like when he plays a teen girl stuck in the body of a male jungle explorer, but it can be a drag when the character is so one-note, which maybe seems like an ironic description for a polka musician. Beyond talking in a weird European accent and commiting fraud via a Ponzi scheme, there's just not much to the Jan Lewan character.
I'm usually the one complaining when a biopic or a film "based on a true story" (as if "true" and "story" weren't contradictory) changes the facts around, but perhaps this film shows what can go wrong when a story is left alone and not messed with for dramatic purposes. Because things happen here, don't get me wrong, but very few of them seem to have a meaningful purpose, the parts aren't arranged in a way that properly builds to something greater. There's very little running narrative, in other words, it just comes off like a series of unrelated things that happened.
We're told that Lewan's financial dealings are very complicated, but were they? We can't be sure if the film doesn't even try to explain what he was doing, or why it was illegal. At least in "The Producers" there was a semi-rational way to make money - raise too much cash from investors, make sure the play flops, so the investors won't demand their money back. But Lewan's music is consistently popular on the German/Polish circuit in the Pennsylvania area, so how is he making money? We assume it's from taking the money from the new investors and giving it out as dividends to the older investors, but that's only because we the audience are familiar with other similar schemes from the likes of Bernie Madoff.
When an investigator from the SEC comes around, and points out that Lewan never registered his business properly, and informs him he'll have to give all the money back within three days, it's unclear why the investigator just took him at his word, and didn't ask to even look at the books. I'm not an expert on this, but I'm used to dealing with workers compensation and disability policies for my employers, and there's always an auditor who wants to see our payroll records, so I make sure they're always in order. I find it hard to believe that an investigator would be satisfied with a phone call saying everything wrong has been fixed.
It seems like he just started the same scheme over under another name, like he didn't register the second business either, but he uses this to start a record label and a pierogi-making business - and at NO TIME does any government entity want to see the official paperwork on those companies? I also find that hard to believe. Jan goes on to use the profits from his schemes to bribe beauty pageant judges so his wife will win, and also to get a group of vacationing Americans an audience with the Pope. Well, maybe there's something to his "dream it, then make it happen" mentality. How else can you explain someone with a failing real estate empire, a failed vodka brand, a failed university and a failed steak company failed his way all the way to become President? The only rational explanation is that something illegal is going on behind the scenes.
Eventually the authorities figured out that Lewan's accounting practices warranted a closer look - maybe in the near future they'll finally catch up with Trump's tax returns, too. That NY Times article a couple months ago certainly suggested that things haven't been done legally since Trump was a small child "inheriting" businesses from his father. So like several other films already this year, this is another one that ended up full of accidental veiled references to Trump. The fixed beauty pageants, the media and culinary empire, the central figure who's more of a showman and huckster than a legit businessman - the signs are all right there.
Also starring Jenny Slate (last seen in "Gifted"), Jason Schwartzman (last seen in "I Heart Huckabees"), Jacki Weaver (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Vanessa Bayer (last seen in "Trainwreck"), J.B. Smoove (last heard in "The Smurfs 2"), Willie Garson (last seen in "Play It to the Bone"), Robert Capron, Lew Schneider with archive footage of George Burns, George H.W. Bush, Donald Trump, Judy Tenuta and the real Jan Lewan.
RATING: 4 out of 10 mustard stains
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