Heckler

Heckler is a documentary by Jamie Kennedy which starts out doing a retrospective on hecklers and critics, but it soon becomes Jamie Kennedy confronting online reviewers who gave him bad reviews, and then making fun of them. The many many interviews with comedians and filmmakers is pretty entertaining, Arsenio Hall was pretty awesome, and others like Louis Anderson and Andy Milonakis show sides of them they usually don’t have. There are some archival footage of historic heckler showdowns, and some stuff that seems staged for the film. The repeated mantra seems to be that critics criticize because they can’t do. They make a specific point of saying that Roger Ebert is a critic that matters because he actually wrote a film, but he is also one of the few critics not interviewed in the film (I am not sure how close to Ebert being in the hospital this film was made, though)

The second half changes tone to become basically an attack on internet critics. The Uwe Boll boxing match with webmasters is featured, and Jaime Kennedy talks to several people who gave him bad reviews, reads some of what they wrote, then watches as they squirm trying to justify their position. Only one of them seems to come off okay, the rest are awkward in front of the camera at best and depressing at worst. The film skirts with the notion of the internet being where anyone can have their opinion and it being pretty anonymous, but the point is not dealt with enough and instead it veers back again and again with Kennedy getting revenge on his critics in a real-life version of the ending of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. As for Kennedy himself, I enjoy some of his films and don’t think he is unfunny, but he comes off as a whiner near the end. Doing comedy is not easy, but people who take the opinions of anonymous guys with websites (like me!) seriously need to develop thicker skin. Anyone who has cruised the comments on YouTube or YahooNews or similar mainstream sites filled with morons will quickly hang themselves if they took it to heart. So what if some guy says you are dumb on the internet?

But the film does get us some naked boobs, as well as a hilarious scene where a girl beats up her boyfriend for ruining her chance of sleeping with Jamie Kennedy. That’s as close as it gets to becoming relevant as to how Hollywood treats women.

Heckler was a good watch for the most part, and even as a comedian venting session it gave a lot of named stars and had some humorous skits mixed in that more than made up for the shortcomings. My largest complaint is the docu should have focused more on dismissing your critics like water off a duck’s back. (or maybe:

And, yes, I realize the irony of me criticizing Heckler on the internet. But that’s how we roll on TarsTarkas.NET!
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