Me and You and Everyone We Know

Bomb Rating: 

I suppose I'm paying the film a compliment when I say that, while it was stupendously bad, it wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen.

I can actually say with relative confidence that most people on the planet Earth will hate this movie considerably more than I did, as evidenced by the people who walked out of the theater behind me yapping about how it was the worst thing they'd ever seen. I suppose I'm paying the film a compliment when I say that, while it was stupendously bad, it wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen.

Ironically, the reason I hated it is probably the opposite of why most people hated it. Most people will hate this film because they're simply too stupid to understand it. I, on the other hand, hated it because writer/director/actress/singer Miranda July throws too many bones to the audience, hoping they'll get the simplistic metaphors she's spewing.

See, July's character, Christine, is a performance artist, which should give you some clue as to what's going on in the movie. She submits a video piece to a museum and just before the curator is about to begin evaluating, she says something to the effect of "unless this says something about meaning in the digital culture, we're not interested." This is essentially what July is trying to do: explore issues in the digital culture. The title is a reference Peter (Miles Thompson) makes. One of his hobbies, along with his young brother, Robby (Brandon Ratcliff), is to make pictures on his computer using apostrophes, periods, and such. He prints out one such picture and claims it's a view of people from the sky and that the semicolons and periods represent "Me and you and everyone we know." Yawn.

Thus, we're treated to a plotless story of dysfunction because digital culture is full of constant disconnects. Presumably, with the advance of technology, people lose their ability to communicate and to gain deep understanding. Richard (John Hawkes) is recently divorced and can hardly communicate with Peter and Robby, his kids. He and Christine meet, but their courtship goes completely haywire since they're both so completely screwed up. It's all about how we as a society can't even agree on our misinterpretations of reality.

July might argue that this is why I've interpreted her film to be complete crap, but she'd be wrong.

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