Sorry, Thanks (2009)

Pretty Good

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Seriously, people involved with the production of films or related to the filmmaker, or indeed the filmmakers themselves really need to stop making a point of leaving positive reviews for their films. There's nothing more ridiculous than to read reviews for a film like Sorry, Thanks claiming it to be funny, truthful, well acted, ground breaking etc when it is very clearly none of these things. The film's described as an unromantic comedy, suggesting that the writer/director wanted the audience to think the film was breaking new ground, sadly it's just like many of the so called mumblecore films where frankly unlikeable and self absorbed post teen college graduates take dead end jobs, begin and and end relationships, whilst talking about random things during random scenes which don't drive the films forward, or add anything to the plots. Or, as in the case of Sorry, Thanks, even have a plot. In Sorry, Thanks the main character, Kira breaks up with her boyfriend, takes a dead end job with a publisher and then starts sleeping with a lot of random guys, including one of her best friends. Max is also in a dead end job that he can't even bothered to turn up on time to do and has a girlfriend who loves him but who he treats rather badly, plus two friends who are equally as hopeless as he is but who regularly accuse him of being an arsehole and a jerk.The equally idiotic Kira never sorts out what job she should be doing, or who she should be with. Max doesn't stop being an arsehole and a jerk but his girlfriend continues to put up with him, even after she discovers that he has cheated on her. At no time is it clear why both Kira and the nice girlfriend are willing to spare the idiot Max the time of day let alone date him, or why Max is so drawn to Kira who does nothing but pull weird faces allthe time. The whole thing could have been adequately covered in a 15 minute short but, in order to bump it up to a feature, we're subjected to endless pointless scenes which add up to nothing at all. if you value your time don't waste it on this.

I found this movie fascinating. I just happened upon it while flipping through the channels and soon became glued to it. I've watched it twice and have been looking for it to purchase. I loved the character study of the main characters: Max, a guy with loose morals and a questionable conscience; Kira, a girl looking for something more in her life--both romantically as well as professionally; Sarah, Max's loving girlfriend who works at helping heroin-addicted schizophrenics; and assorted pseudo-intellectual friends that attempt to understand and/or support their friends. Max dislikes his job working for a senator and questions his conscience for continuing to do so. He's in a three-year-long relationship with Sarah, a decent, respectable person that apparently loves Max despite his failings. Max seems kind of lost, like he's looking for something in his life, but he doesn't know what. He's just kind of going through the motions in life. Then Max meets Kira, a girl that has just broken up with her long-time boyfriend, and the two hook up. Kira's trying to get a copy editing job, a position for which she is apparently overqualified. She left her job of five years after experiencing frustration at being mistaken for the only other black girl in the office. She seems aimless, restless, searching for something that's missing in her life. She even toys with the idea of moving to Italy for a year. Kira hooks up with a couple more guys, none of whom she's at all interested in.Max and Kira have mutual friends and keep ending up on group dates. Kira learns that Max has a girlfriend when they meet again at a bar where an unsuspecting Sarah buys Kira a drink. Max seems more interested in pursuing either another dalliance or some sort of relationship with Kira than Kira is in hooking up with Max again. They're both looking for something missing in their lives, but unsure of what it is they want. SPOILER ALERT: This has one of the saddest endings I've ever seen. Sarah finds a used condom wrapper in Max's bathroom while hunting for bandages to fix up Max's bike injury. She is obviously extremely hurt and you think she's going to break up with the unsuspecting Max, but she doesn't. She just wipes away her tears and goes in the kitchen to bandage Max's wound. Not revealing her true feelings, she starts discussing the tickets they must purchase to fly to Ohio in two weeks. Sarah reminisces about some event they'd shared with Max's family in the past. She remarks that he was undiplomatic towards his mother and this tells you a lot about what kind of a guy Max is as well as how Sarah feels about him. You know Sarah loves Max unconditionally, the way a mother loves a child. She's going to love him and care for him regardless of his somewhat emotional detachment toward her.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, and call me crazy for feeling this way, but I sort of think movies need to have a point. They need to be entertaining, and if they're not, they need to have some redeeming value that makes their very existence worthwhile. Watching boring people live their boring lives just doesn't cut it with me. Especially when those boring people happen to be either idiotic, amoral, or a little of both. In, Sorry Thanks, I wouldn't even want to be friends with half of these people, let alone be involved in their lives in any manner whatsoever, so why would I care to watch them for 90 minutes? Main character, Max is an idiot twenty-something who has a dead end job he doesn't even try at...when not at said job, he's with his adorable girlfriend whom he pretty much treats like garbage or friends who seem to think he is a douche bag lacking in morals (in fact, there are two scenes where they tell him he is immoral and an ass). Oh, and on the side, he's having sex with Kira behind his adorable and loving girlfriend's back. Kira is. Well, how do you even describe Kira? First off, she's odd. She makes odd faces, she makes odd jokes, and she just acts odd. Max is somehow attracted to this, so why not destroy another person by sleeping with odd girl? Kira has a new job as a copy editor and a string of random boyfriends who aren't boyfriends. Like Max, she seems to be down with messing with people- her friends seem to do the same thing Max's friends do- sort of push the idea that she's kind of a jerk. Kira is, admittedly, slightly less of a douche bag than Max. Now that I've explained the two main characters, people whom you'd probably want to get AS far away from in real life, I'll explain the plot. Oh wait, I can't, as there is no plot. It's basically 90 mins of watching two assholes who think they're clever and cool do whatever the hell they want.There are small flashes of likability among the two main characters, and we keep getting scenes of Max being semi-charming in a "I'm 20 something but I act like I'm 6" way. But, in the end, little tidbits of charm don't change the fact that these are just unlikeable characters that serve little purpose other than to exist on video. None of them drive any story forward (as there really is no story), none of them add anything to the overall mood of the movie, and none of them really matter at all. If I wanted to watch morons be boring and violating all sorts of trust with other people, I'd turn on reality TV. Like I said- movies need to fulfill a purpose. God only knows what purpose writers, Dia Sokol and Lauren Veloski, thought their movie served. I can only assume they were bored one day. Sadly, it's films like Sorry, Thanks that will continue to give indie films a bad name. People will watch this and say, "see, this is why I never watch independent cinema! The writing sucks, the characters suck, and the acting is, in some parts, miserable." (the cat lady comes to mind immediately). It's a shame, because there are some really great indie films out there. This just isn't one of them.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this film, as I kinda liked it, but also felt it was sort of a waste of time to watch.The story is about a group of post-teens, who doesn't really seem to know what they want with their lives, and go around living just for the sake of living. The protagonist is Max, played by perhaps the only well-known actor in the film at this point, Wiley Wiggins (from "Waking Life" and "Dazed and Confused"-fame). Max unambitiously works as a sort of telephone operator, not really putting much thought nor effort into his job, and frequently comes in late, as a result of him not having a car, and refusing to use public transportation. He has just had a one-night stand with Kira (Kenya Miles), who had just broken up with her boyfriend, and Max can't seem to stop thinking about her, even though he is already in a steady relationship with his long-term girlfriend Sara. Max doesn't seem to be regretting his affair, but at the same time doesn't want to break up with his girlfriend either, so he is going through some emotional issues (or rather, lack thereof) throughout the film, and we follow him around, essentially doing nothing, and then doing more of nothing later. We also follow some of the other characters around, also doing basically nothing too.Even though most of the characters are very shallow, they still belong to this interesting group of goal-less youths, which probably take up more and more of the modern western society today, and because many of us (including myself) belong to this group, the film becomes strangely relevant, despite apparently not really having a goal of its own.So, overall I rate this a 6/10, purely because of the likability-effect that these post-teens have, and because I can identify with many of the issues they face during their everyday lives. But it is probably not a movie I'd consider viewing multiple times, as it doesn't really seem to be going anywhere, with a character-development of basically zero.