Shag Carpet Sunset (2002)
Sigh. "Shag Carpet Sunset" is a
complete waste of time and video tape. It's not that
I don't like no-budget video films. It's not that
I don't like avant-garde and unusual things. It's
just that I'd like to see something that entertains
me. "Shag Carpet Sunset" barely seems to entertain
the people who are in it, let alone the audience.
The cast seems as bored and listless and the lead,
who is also the writer and director, Andrew McAllister.
For what it is worth, McAllister seems smashed out
of his gourd and totally into his own pudding, not
that this forgives him for this mess.
I'll try to explain the plot considering
that I can't figure out what the fuck this film is
about! Tuck is a slackeresque, 20-something guy who
lives in some town somewhere and drinks chocolate
milk as often as he drinks beer. He has a cable access
show where he is a puppeteer. He works at night cleaning
rooftops for a guy who makes him wear a plastic Viking
outfit (not as interesting as it sounds). He plays
harmonica on the street corner. He stalks an ex-girlfriend
by sleeping on her roof (and dreaming he is jumping
into a kiddie swimming pool?) He thinks about when
he was a kid and his father was insane (or was he
just an average Joe Schmoe?) He whines incessantly
about the meaninglessness of something or the other.
I don't mean that he whines about this and then he
whines about that. I mean he just whines about something
or the other but you can't really understand the incomprehensible,
Ed Woodian dialogue to make heads or tails out of
what exactly it is he is whining about. I'll be God-
damned if I can figure out what he is talking about
at any point in this film.
Writer/director McAllister is one
of those guys who thinks he's oh-so clever and cool
when he is, in actuality, a simply typical, angst-ridden-for-no-reason,
sophomoric schlub. He wrongly suspects that we are
interested in this blue funk that he walks around
in all the time. But worse yet, he thinks he is waxing
poetically about the meaninglessness of life (or is
it the meaninglessness of meaninglessness) when all
he is really doing is gibbering on and on about stuff
and we can't make any sense at all out of what he
is saying. The dialogue here often seems like it was
written by someone who spoke some other language and
then tried to have his words translated into English.
God, it is pointless, pretentious and annoying.
Why waste any more of my life on
talking about this film? The 80 minutes I wasted watching
it is enough. It's crap. Case closed. I need an aspirin.
And a vodka and Sprite.
