By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Lynn Shelton
Starring: Alycia Delmore | Joshua Leonard | Mark Duplass
Country: united_states
Year: 2009
Running time: 94
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1334537/reference
Jason says: “I haven’t seen Lynn Shelton’s first feature, but MY EFFORTLESS BRILLIANCE and HUMPDAYT form an interesting pattern, and not just in how both are kicked off by an old friend visiting unannounced. Unlike many female independent filmmakers who focus on making movies about women, Shelton opts to explore male relationships.
“Here, the unexpected visitor is Andrew (Joshua Leonard), a globetrotting artist. It’s two in the morning when he arrives at the Seattle home of Ben (Mark Duplass) and Anna (Alycia Delmore), who are married and ready to start a family. Andrew soon meets up with a local artsy crowd, and Ben’s intention to just stop by for an hour becomes a long drink-and-weed-fueled evening. One of the guests mentions and upcoming art-porn fest, and Andrew and Ben hatch the idea of shooting themselves having sex as an expression of their friendship. After they sober up… Well, offering each other the chance to back down triggers a thoroughly incongruous macho response.
“There’s a scene in the middle of the film that is so sitcom-like that the audience might almost expect to hear a laugh track. From the plot description, you can probably guess what it is. Answering audience questions after, the cast member and crew talked like good indie filmmakers about how they tried to avoid that impression, but in all honesty, I think the sitcom feel of that scene makes it, and maybe even the movie as a whole, work. Shelton has already set up a kind of out-there situation and then pushed it further when it might have been a whole lot more logical for the characters to back down. Inserting a moment that conventional makes it easier for the audience to buy into the story. Besides, things do become conventions because they work on some level, and that scene is darn funny.
“Of course, it’s the ways in which characters defy convention that make them and the works in which they appear interesting as opposed to just well-executed. Andrew finds himself perhaps not quite so open-minded as he thinks he should be, while Ben may be a little more so. Then there’s Anna, a supporting character who nearly breaks the fourth wall pointing out that she’s her own person who exists for reasons other thtan how she relates to Ben and creates conflict in the story. In relatively little screen time, she establishes herself as a character who exists beyond the movie.
“Credit Alycia Delmore for much of that; she got perhaps the trickiest character and not only sells us that Anna is angry and resentful, but also understanding and independent; when she’s not on-screen it’s because she’s got her own stuff going on. Mark Duplass gets the biggest speeches, and delivers them with the right mix of sincerity and uncertainty; he’s also got great comedic instincts. Leonard is good, too, showing his character stumbling toward maturity.
“Lynn Shelton and her cast and crew – especially editor Nat Sanders – deserve all sorts of praise for making something that seems honest and believable out of what seems like a nutty concept, but also for making it funny. I came in dreading a story that was all about sexuality and closets, and though there are elements of that in there, it doesn’t come close to overwhelming the comedy. This is a pretty funny situation, and Shelton runs with that, whether it be in the form of light slapstick, miscommunications, or funny dialogue.
“Coincidentally, I saw this at a festival that opened with I LOVE YOU, MAN. I wonder just how far that one goes with the subject. I’m guessing it’s not quite like this.“
Michael says: “To say that HUMPDAY is Lynn Shelton’s indie answer to I LOVE YOU, MAN does indeed sell her film short, but I’m not one of the many people who are over the moon for HUMPDAY EITHER. There’s a lot to like in this examination of male friendship and one-upmanship, but I have some reservations as well. While some would praise Shelton on her depiction of a close relationship between straight guys, I would actually disagree with that assessment and focus more on her wonderfully, complex depiction of women in a predominantly male film.
“When young married couple Ben and Anna are woken in the middle of the night by Ben’s college friend Andrew banging on their door, they have no idea what their relationship will go through in the coming days. Ben and Andrew shared a wild, anti-establishment youth, but their paths diverge as they lose touch with one another; Ben gets married and moves to the suburbs, and Andrew travels to exotic locales a continues to live a bohemian lifestyle. Naturally Ben feels mild jealousy at Ben’s free-spirited ways, but is defensive about his friends perception that he has become a big square. One night at a party with some artistic friends Andrew has recently made, the two friends find themselves bragging that they are going to enter a contest involving an amateur porn film. Their premise is to depict the two of them… two straight friends, having sex.
“With their competitive history clearly established, it’s no surprise that the next, sobering day does little to bring the two ‘men’ to their senses as neither will back down before the other. As the scheduled day of filming draws closer we predictably discover that Ben is not as open-minded and free-spirited as he presents himself, and Ben is more complex than his buddy gives him credit for. But the real surprise, and the highlight of the film, is Anna, who surprises everyone with her sometimes surprising, always believable responses to the situations that arise. I would have preferred a film focusing on Anna personally, as the behavior of the two leads was mainly irritating for me, although admittedly it was occasionally funny.
“I enjoyed Shelton’s naturalistic film-making style and handheld camerawork. The improvisational style of developing the script weakened the overall film in my opinion. In recent Q&A’s Shelton described a process that sounded similar to Mike Leigh’s method of script-development, but the two male leads lack the acting chops to make this process entirely successful. Jay Duplass particularly tries to rely on his good-natured, good-looking, everyman performance to pull him through this complex subject. Where Duplass is excellent is his hesitant, drawn-out attempts to have difficult discussions with his wife and his best friend. Those scenes are so incredibly awkward and filled with tension that I was actually giggling with delight at times. Joshua Leonard is amazingly annoying as Andrew, but his character is more fully-realized than Ben’s, and the actor sits more comfortably in his skin. And as I mentioned before, Alycia Delmore is outstanding as Anna. Without her this film would probably merit a cat or a cat and a half. Instead, I will give HUMPDAY 3 ½ cats”