WORLD OF COMEDY FILM FESTIVAL at Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex), Friday to Sunday (February 27 to March 1). Tickets available only at the door – $10 (Seniors $8). See Indie & Rep Film. Rating: NNN
Like the man said, comedy is not pretty. It’s also not always consistently funny. More often than not, there’s a big gap between premise and execution, a sad truth demonstrated by several titles in this year’s World Of Comedy Film Festival.
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The fest’s sixth edition returns to Innis Town Hall this weekend with a passel of short films and a trio of features.
A sizable number of this year’s shorts seem to be calling-card projects made by actors, writers and directors anxious to demonstrate their skills. Fair enough, but only a few of them are actually interested in being comedies several are just rambling, well-photographed nothings like Murphy Gilson’s Partially True Tales Of High Adventure! (More Shorts!, Saturday, 5 pm, Rating: NN) or long set-ups for quasi-ironic twist endings, like David Tamkin’s Stan Maynard’s Best Day Ever (Shorts On The Line, Saturday, 9:30 pm, Rating: NNN).
I was eager to see Jim Pasternak’s Certifiably Jonathan (Saturday, 7:30 pm, Rating: NN), the only feature available for preview. It sets itself up as a documentary about the mercurial comic Jonathan Winters, who turns out to be a committed painter as well as a brilliant stand-up. But once Winters embarks on a quest to find his stolen sense of humour (yes, really), the movie – already conceptually awkward – flies off the rails.
The Animation And Mockumentary Shorts program (Sunday, 5 pm) offers the most consistent selection, from Bill Plympton’s goofy Hot Dog (Rating: NNNN), in which a frantic canine does his hapless best to aid his firemen in their duties, to three episodes of Aardman Animation’s delightful stop-motion series Shaun The Sheep (Rating: NNNNN), spun off from the Wallace & Gromit movies, and Aardman’s At Home With Pip And Pog (Rating: NNNN), a bone-dry deconstruction of British children’s television.
