Checked out the new dark comedy The Art of Self Defense. Small movie, probably won’t be noticed by many… but a good movie… assuming you like odd, kind of violent, kind of spoofs of sports movies and toxic masculinity. Or something.
Art of Self Defense stars Jesse Eisenberg in a Jesse Eisenerg role.. an odd introvert who is scared of everything (and who has a passive aggressive answering machine so not even technology respects him). He gets mugged and beaten one night and then stumbles upon a karate dojo who’s sensei promises to teach him to stand up for himself (and how to not have a girly dog and such a girly name). In short order, Eisenberg’s character gets sucked into a web of lies and deceit (and crime).
The film is, at its heart, a kind of subtle satire of the Karate Kid or pretty much any boxing or kung-fu sports movie where people train to fight or defend themselves. It’s approach to masculinity and machoness is clearly a mockery and the movie is quite funny in a… unique… odd… sort of way. It’s hard to describe the style of dialog in the film but if you’ve ever seen The Lobster, you’re on the right track. People talk with an odd, affected, emotionless way and deliberately over-explain things like they aren’t exactly human. But this movie doesn’t have any of the Lobster’s vague sf gimmicks… it’s… very odd and I was amused by it.
And I’m not sure everyone will find this movie funny. I can’t say for sure why, but I was really into it. Now, the overall plot is largely predictable if you’ve seen any movie before, but the reactions to the predictable plot points never quite are. Where is this movie ultimately going once the shoe drops and we know what we’d pretty much expected from the start? I appreciated being uncertain and surprised by a movie.
This isn’t for everyone and certainly everyone isn’t going to even notice it was released (right in the middle of Summer… how weird is that!?). But if you at all like Jesse Eisenberg’s shtick, if you like a dark, pitch black comedy, if you want to see some commentary on toxic masculinity (that isn’t actually preachy), or if you just want something different, this is maybe worth checking out.
Score: 81