FF REVIEW: RUBBER

Saw this at the Cinefamily showing and loved it, for anyone who has studied story structure and how to introduce a character it is a hoot. 

There really isn't much I can say that isn't touched upon in FF review other than the move seems to specifically target Lars Von Trier's style and aims to takes the piss out of him. 

RUBBER was just too hip for me. I do get what it was going for, but I didn't find it all that funny or cinematically interesting. Becket did come to mind, but then Waiting for Godot was too hip for me as well. Hahahahah, so it makes sense that RUBBER left me cold. It's one of those movies that didn't click with me, but I'm glad of its existence.

I do think that the film could've shortened the amount of time it took for Robert to jiggle and blow up heads. That felt tedious by his second or third attempt.

Agreed on the prolonged head popping. Maybe it's just me and that frequency, but everytime he did it it really irked the shit out of me. Could not stand that noise. Also, this movie had a perfect ending ("Oh, now it's a tricycle!" followed by a cut to black would have fucking destroyed me) and then kept going on and had it's far lamer ending. I understand how it's tweaking the genre's need to leave things open for a sequel, no matter how retarded, but the way it was executed was not great.

That being said, once I got into it's groove this was one of the funniest movies I've seen in a long long time. I'm not sure it's as clever as it thinks it is, or is deconstructing the genre as well as it think it is, but it's absurdist sense of humor hit me in just the right spot. 

Also, I thought the craft of the tire's puppet work was really impressive. Not quite on the level of something like The Red Balloon (a film I feel this definitely referenced, especially with the ending) but it reminded me of it.

By the end, it seemed like they had a shitload of footage of inanimate objects moving by themselves, and the filmmakers wanted to make sure we saw every bit of it. 

It just wouldn't end.

Watched the blu of this today. I'm with mcnooj, only much more virulent reaction. Far, far too hip for me, and, IMSNHO, far too in love with its own cleverness. It felt very film studentish to me, and my viewing companion - who, thanks to her film major sister, has seen many, many student films. Maybe I'm not smart enough for the film - I'm pretty terrible at deconstructing more conventional films, let alone something like this - but this just stank to me of someone trying to prove how much smarter they are.

I laughed some, but even at 75 minutes, this felt too long. Very glad I paid no money to watch this (my library has a very good BD collection).

I very much felt like this film was too in love with itself and that Dupieux thinks he's being more clever and witty than he actually is. So, spoken bluntly, Rubber put me off. I don't know if I'd be saying the same thing if Rubber was a short rather than feature-length-- maybe with less time the joke wouldn't have wound up being quite as grating as it is. It's not a huge waste of time, and the puppetry with the tire is pretty good, but it's too self-obsessed for me.

Totally agreed with the above posts. While I liked its absurdist humor, the characters of Robert and the main cop, the photography, and what the movie was trying to do, the final result annoyed me more than anything. It's just too buried in its own cleverness and deconstructionist agenda to be a film of any real substance. I at least wanted the people to be real people (see: Adaptation).

But I think the biggest culprit of the movie is the editing. There are long stretches that could have used some serious cutting; the impact of many scenes was compromised due to needless lingering.

I also think the "no reason" prologue gives the film a free pass at not making any real sense at times. I really wanted all the ingredients to gel into an awesome whole in the last act, but instead it fizzled, and didn't end when it should have. Jesus, it felt like it went on forever.