I'm Still Here (2010)

Good concept, poorly executed.

Better Late Then Never

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Joaquin Phoenix was raised in a non-traditional performing family. Beginning in 2009, he is a big star but he's tired of the work. He decides to quit acting. He wants to rap and become a hip hop star.This is a mockumentary. The problem is that Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix had an idea while smoking something, and they actually went through with it. They want to make a shocking reality show and ends up making a pretty boring movie. The shock is for nothing more than for shock's sake. I don't care about this version of Joaquin. I don't laugh with him or at him. I laughed at the David Letterman interview but that's because of Letterman. This movie has little entertainment value. It is of some artistic value for how long he kept up the act.

Had this been produced before the time of the Internet and Youtube, it would have been beyond pointless. After all, who would we have needed Phoenix playing a mumbling, unpleasant and utterly untalented and unlikeable wanna-be rapper? Nobody, since people like Sascha Baron Cohen and the "Spinal Tap"-crew had done it already a long time ago. Or Eninem and Vanilla Ice.If you're into make-believe-comedy, you might ask yourself: "Hasn't Andy Kauffman done this 30+ years ago?" Yes he did; very successful and very funny. In comparison, "I'm Still Here" is neither funny nor successful. It's tedious and rather pathetic to watch. What was the point of making Phoenix look like a vagrant Jim Morrison and, in the post-MTV age, turn him into a Hip Hop artist? Casey Affleck may have watched "Being John Malkovich", but whether he learned something from this film is questionable. Taking the title from another surreal biopic, namely "I'm Not There" (about the life and times of Bob Dylan), is a dead giveaway concerning the 'wit' that has gone into this project.Who else has pulled off a similar stunt in recent years? To mind comes Sascha Baron Cohen and his Bruno/Borat personas. Again, the fundamental difference being that Cohen intends to entertain and does so successfully. "I'm Still Here" doesn't entertain - it depresses because you know it's so obviously fake and that there will be no laughs had. If Cohen tries to tickle laughter out of his audience then Phoenix is content to do exactly the opposite.But in the context of the Youtube-phenomenon, where Andy Warhol's prediction has perversely come true and everybody – bloggers, vloggers, trolls and the boy/girl who screamed "Leave Britney alone!" – are all celebrities in their own rights, the film may raise one or the other interesting question.Like this film, the internet is filled with what internet-terminology is called "fail". "Fail" implying that the joke is always on you and only a lot of self-deceit will prevent you to realize that people are not laughing with you but about you. In this dimension, celebrity isn't measured in terms of money but by the number of clicks views – and whether you're filming yourself pushing pins into your forehead or presenting the world's most awful rap-performance, in this global "Truman Show" a "fail"-video will invariably get the most views. A global "Truman Show".Take those pathetic, pointless and humiliating videos and put them together into an hour and a half long film, what you get is "I'm Still Here" – but with more celebrity gawking.If you wanted to document a broken, freakish celebrity in the public limelight, why don't you just make a movie about Michael Jackson or Punk Rocker GG Allin? It might have saved two years of Phoenixes life (not to mention his credibility, both as actor and person).Am I being too generous to give the film 2 points from 10?

This is probably the only movie I recommend going in reading the spoiler alert...I hadn't and I admit remembering the original Letterman piece and mentioning some concern about Joaquin Phoenix to my savvy 20 y.o., who laughed as if he were "in on it". I did see the brief media flurry and forgot all about it, that is until I came across it on Netflix and was intrigued enough to watch it a few hours ago. Going in clueless and not as savvy as my son, it took a while for me to catch on, I admit, until I "got it" it was difficult for me, as it would have to be for any naive viewer. Then it clicked. This film is part of a larger work of satirical performance art involving and targeting, on a smaller scale the dehumanizing relationship between film as art and banal pop culture. On a larger scale ISH sends up those who fall into believing in, or helping to create the artificial world projected onto, and opiating the masses. For me the scene with the Diddy(obviously in on it, acting) offering insincere platitudes as he tries to let "JP" down easy, gets to one of the works deeper messages - a refutation of the erroneous modern notion that "the skies the limit" for those with a dream and enough heart. If you try taking this in as an attempt at mockumentary you wonder why the artists put in the disgusting excretory parts. As in any piece of satire there is an intended audience and an intended target. Those who don't get it wouldn't do so even with JP himself "busting their teeth in and s**ting in their faces." Kudos to Affleck, Phoenix and all those who were in on this masterful piece(Diddy, "EJO", Stiller, etc.) This is only a hoax to those who were once(Letterman) or are still hopelessly out of the loop - los sientos muchos.

Did you count how many F... Mr. I'm Still Here tells on the movie? It was hard to see it, because of the emptiness of the subject. I did not know him and from now on I will prefer to get away from such lack of culture. This is a movie for a certain kind of adolescents. Actually, this cannot be called a "movie".They ask me to write 10 lines of a review, but I cannot since I have nothing more to tell about what I saw. Better than to cote a song from Madonna: Some boys kiss me, some boys hug me I think they're okay If they don't give me proper credit I just walk away They can beg and they can plead But they can't see the light, that's right, that's right 'Cause the boy with the cold hard cash Is always Mister Right 'Cause we are living in a material world And I am a material girl You know that we are living in a material world And I am a material girl