Director: Lee Kirk
Writer: Lee Kirk
Who knew? Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day can act. I'm almost proud. I mean that in the best possible way too, I honestly don't mean it in a sly way. He just always kinda seemed like the kind of guy who wouldn't really be all that into acting, always seemed more of a music guy y'know. Duh, dickhead, he's in a band obviously he'd be into music. I know what I mean. Moving on. Blessed that this guy can act, maybe he could make a career out of it, more of a career than he already has. I gotta stop waffling and talk about the film.
The first thing I noticed about this was that Selma Blair is in this. Who is she? Vivian Kensington from Legally Blonde. Here she plays Karen, a lawyer. Does that make this an unofficial spinoff/sequel to Legally Blonde? Probably not but it's just something cool I picked up on. Karen is Perry's (Billie Joe Armstrong) wife who seems to have forgotten his birthday. She didn't but he thinks she did and this spurs on the story. The couple have two children together. A baby whose name I'm totally unaware of considering his name doesn't come up in the film and in the subtitles, it's "boy" soooo? Did they name the baby? Or was he just such an insignificant part of the film that he didn't deserve one? Probably did him some good because these two should be banned from naming children after what they called their first child. Salome (sal-oh-may). Who the fuck that was a good name? I wrote jokes about that name in my notes, mostly around the fact that that fuckhole of a name is almost too close to Salmonella. Like I'm not ok with celebrity baby names and I think everyone has that one that bothers them to the point it's upsetting or hysterical. Not like I can talk, I wanna name my kids after obscure but fantastic Harry Potter characters but...they're gonna be named after great characters. This one is named after a bacteria. Gross. Don't call your kid stupid shit like that.
As I said in my introduction sentence, someone here is really fucking with Perry. And they are, I don't know if it's just him fucking with himself forgetting his own birthday, can't lie I do that...nearly every year. It could be his family just making up that his birthday is the 17th when it actually is the 16th and they're trying to buy themselves time. Or finally, it could be his horrible, self-centered, immature fucks of friends. I think I'm going to blame the friends because early on in the film Perry's brother Jake (Chris Messina) thinks that the birthday is tomorrow not today and it takes a hell of a long time for Perry's friends to turn up to the expensive hotel room. Personally, I think they all got the calls and had a meeting, discussing with each other that their old friend has got a hotel room and is willing to have a blowout party for his birthday. So, rather than say "you're an idiot, you've missed a day, you're 40 tomorrow" they're like "Woaaaaaahhhhhhh partaaaaaaayyyyyyyy". For one, you're all between 35-45 age range. You all suck if that's what you're doing at that age. I'm not saying don't have fun and don't party at that age but what I am saying is don't do it at the expense of your friend. You're old enough to know the value of money, you're old enough to be aware of human emotion and through that, you should be aware of when you're having fun at the expense of someone else's discomfort. You're a shitty friend if you're willing to risk your friend's happiness and stress levels if you're gonna do that. Then fuckin' Gary takes his birthday present. I mean, it was given to him but still...sucky thing to do, I'd be like "nah man, your birthday you keep 'em." Then again I barely enjoy when people buy me anything, that money could have gone to something more important. I dunno, guess I'm just old before my time. I guess that means I've got a hell of a midlife crisis coming at me but right now I'm the middle of a quarter life crisis so I don't know.
Speaking of the hotel, Rupert (Brian Baumgartner) is the concierge or, according to Wikipedia, he's the "no-nonsense owner" which...I don't get. Why would the owner be working behind the desk? Would he not be in a meeting or in his office dealing with the business side of things? I just have doubts as to whether the owner of a pretty fancy hotel in New York would have to deal with a triviality such as checking in guests. Back to Rupert. This guy's talents are totally wasted working in a hotel. Seriously. He should be a whisky critic or whatever alcohol critics are called. He talks to Perry about this $1000 bottle and it's kind of erotic. I've never been someone who liked the stuff but after hearing Rupert's little monologue, I'd probably fuck that bottle.
Another fun little thing, in the background of one of the scenes, I think it was when Gary called Perry to see where he's at considering he's missing his own party, I noticed the music. Odd thing to pick up on right? What was the music? Figuring it out by SWMRS. Why does that matter? It wouldn't to anyone who doesn't notice shit like this or know who SWMRS are and even then it doesn' matter but I'm gonna bring it up because I didn't write enough notes aside from calling people dicks for what they're doing. SWMRS are a decent band, I've been into them since I was 16 and been to pretty much every Manchester show date they've had as a headline act. These guys are lovely as hell and their music's pretty good ̶I̶'̶m̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶p̶l̶u̶g̶g̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶I̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶m̶i̶s̶e̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶g̶o̶ ̶c̶h̶e̶c̶k̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶m̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶. I'm not bringing this up because it's a song I recognise, I'm bringing it up because there's an element of nepotism to it. Why's that? Because the drummer for SWMRS is Joey Amstrong, the eldest son of Billie Joe Armstrong. It's cool that your son's music got a spot in your film but it also adds fuel to an argument which is that your son is building his career off your back and while couldn't care less, people could kick off about it saying it's not fair and that if he was talented enough he'd do it without your influence or help. I the three years I've been to the gigs those guys are pretty talented and even though I've literally only ever spoken to two of them, they all seem so lovely and deserve the success they've had and what will most likely be coming to them. Was cool to listen to one of my favourite bands for a minute like.
Final note. Towards the end Perry finds out that this trainwreck of a day I mean, his brother fires him due to a loophole in his father's will saying that if Perry doesn't pull his weight you can buy his ass out but if Jake doesn't pull his weight and Perry does, Perry can't do shit about it, regardless of whether he's the older brother. Fuck that guy. That's on top of almost going to jail over a trashed hotel room and only just making it to his daughter's talent show and having a sort-of-ex hitting on him, plus his father-in-law giving him shit over a play house. Perry finds out that none of this even happened on his birthday. This entire day happened because he got stressed because nobody remembered his 40th and he was rightfully upset about it. If it was me, in that moment he finds out it isn't his birthday, I'd probably want to throw myself off a bridge, I'd be that mortified. I really cannot deal with it so I think that just shows the strength of the character, that despite all this bullshit, it happened for literally no reason other than his own stupidity and he was able to deal with that. It was so good to see that strength in a character.
Alright so, overall this was a very basic sort of predictable story but they did something good with it. This could have so easily been a crap and forgettable film and it wasn't. It was cute, charming, funny, well written and well shot. It's a shame it wasn't massively advertised, in England at least I'm not sure about America or anywhere else, but it's a shame because a lot of hard work and effort went into this and I'm not even sure it has the audience it deserves. I mean, I don't want it to have a sequel unless it's just Perry and Karen in court being told they can't name their son Scrooge McDuck due to copyright problems. That's something I'd watch and believe. Definitely go check this out, cute little film.
This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film then go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.
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