Let’s Make a Movie

It takes more than just an idea to make a movie. You need a team, for example. But what happens when no one wants to collaborate, and everyone thinks your idea is… not worth it? ‘Let’s Make a Movie‘ is a short film that illustrates the challenges of such a complicated “artistic labour”, starting from the typologies established in conventional comedies that, this time, are embodied by two wannabe filmmakers. Somehow, the project signed by Dave Farese and Stephen Vanderpool becomes a kind of exercise in imagination that starts from the following question: what would a film directed by the classic characters from “Dumb and Dumber” look like? The answer is quite predictable, but it is not the final product that is important, but the process by which the two characters reach this result. Thus, the viewers who are passionate about this genre can enjoy the spontaneous and cynical (sometimes vulgar) dialogue, the well-known behavioural and discursive stridencies, the tragicomic twists and turns, but also the directors’ attempt to criticize the dilettantism of those who believe that cinema means only sex, politics and… werewolves.

From this last point of view, the initiative of Dave Farese and Stephen Vanderpool is more than commendable, but it is a pity that the social critique dimension is not much more present. This aspect could have given the project an even greater incisiveness, given that, in its current form, the short film risks not competing either in characters or in storyline precisely with the films it intends to criticize. Don’t get us wrong: the short film has many qualities and proves a good knowledge of the technical language, but a better clarification of the directors’ intention, that to criticize a category B cinema, would have contributed decisively to its value. Its potential is not lost, however, since ‘Let’s Make a Movie’ has enough nerve to be able to evolve into something even more challenging. Still, for the feature version of this project, the directors have to find all the resources of (self-)irony and cynicism to create not just a comedy, but a kind of “protest” against films that want at all costs to be mainstream.