Considering how difficult it is to make a film, I really
do not enjoy having to give a bad review to an indie production. But seeing Writer/Director/Actor/Editor Kitty
Green’s The Assistant was like watching paint dry…and that being even
the wrong color!
The film follows a morose Assistant through a day
in her life at a production company with multiple offices in Manhattan’s Tribeca
neighborhood. The company even has its
own plane. But, everyone there is vapid,
wearing cheap suits and having even cheaper personalities, making it totally unbelievable
they could create anything to merit their seeming abundance.
I felt sympathy for another viewer, who moaned, “I feel I’ve
lost an hour and a half of my life.” As
for me, I began to feel empathy with “cutters,” who try to derive some feeling
by injuring themselves.
If I weren’t sitting in the middle of a full row, I would
have walked out to vent my boredom with the internal scream I was holding back.
The Assistant gets only a
1.1 out of 5.
PS: I was, subsequently, told that this film was getting awards for being a Me-Too expose on Harvey Weinstein and the Miramax Company he ran. Only in retrospect could I get that. But, it, unfortunately, seemed like several companies I've heard about, though none quite so dull. And, if one has to be told, in advance, what the movie is about, then this is an even bigger failure. And, since the Assistant wimped out about filling a complaint, that makes it a Me-Too failure, as well. This film is no Bombshell and it bored the shit out of me.
