I can’t imagine who would enjoy writer-director Rick Alverson’s movie Entertainment. Gregg Turkington plays the world’s saddest and least funny professional comedian, who is bouncing around loser gigs in the Mohave Desert (starting at a state prison). Even with his flamboyant comb-over, he’s walking buzz kill. He is increasingly a puddle of despair until he has a full-fledged breakdown while performing at a pool party. Turkington’s portrayal of a protagonist who ranges between dour and nasty is frankly not that all interesting.
Two scenes in particular are unwatchable – a birth scene in a public restroom and the comedian heaping especially vile invective on a bar patron (the filmmaker Amy Seimetz – what is SHE doing in this mess?). The young actor Tye Sheridan (Mud, The Tree of Life, Joe) is good as a clown who opens for the comedian, but his turn doesn’t justify spending any time watching this hateful blight.
It’s a sad comparison to The Entertainer genre of movies about sad sacks trying to hang on to a place in show business and to their own identities. Some critics have been taken in by the “unflinching” aspect of this work, but they’ve missed the pointlessness of the whole unpleasant experience. Entertainment may well be the worst movie-viewing experience of 2015. Available streaming.