Hacks Movie Review

Like writing, acting, and filmmaking, stand-up comedy is a tough road to hoe.

That said, writing and acting in an independent movie about stand-up comedy has to really suck.

Glenn Rockowitz's often very funny indie is another entry into the mockumentary genre, purporting to introduce us to the clientele of the Diamond & Hutz booking agency, a group of stand-up comics that define the word "hack."

There's a middle-aged woman whose husband uses cue cards to direct her bits (often toward "more pussy" jokes). There's a wheelchair-bound comic whose jokes typically fall in the "What's up with wallpaper!?" vein. There's an avant-garde comic who tries to channel Andy Kaufman by simply standing mute on the stage. And most memorably, there's a black albino with a lazy eye who pelts the audience with insults and racial slurs.

Together, they're all headed for a "big comedy showcase" which of course turns out to be something entirely different. Jokes are cracked along the way -- the rest assured, we're not laughing at the jokes, we're laughing at the losers who deliver them. It's darkly funny in a way that rearranging a blind person's furniture might be.

Unfortunately, the documentary style is pretty forced here, and everything is obviously staged (no matter how much you want: you can't put flashbacks in a mockumentary). The intercutting between characters is distracting, as well. Ultimately, we don't get punched with the power of a Best in Show or a Spinal Tap, admittedly bigger-budget movies that weren't shot on videotape, but which just gel together better.

Still, I laughed out loud more than once, and I didn't want to kill myself when it was over (which Rockowitz has threatened to do if I write a bad review). Rest assured, his suicide attempt is not earning him this good-but-not-great rating. In fact, if he offs himself, it might be kinda funny.