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Happy Thanksgetting

November 27th, 2009 by MiamiMovieCritic in Movie Reviews

Thanksgiving is kind of an orphan holiday in American life. Nobody puts up Thanksgiving decorations anymore; they go from Halloween and skip straight to Christmas. I’m not sure there are any Thanksgiving-themed movies. I guess Terrence Malick’s THE NEW WORLD counts since it’s partly about the origins of Thanksgiving, and Ang Lee’s THE ICE STORM might be one since it’s set over a long Thanksgiving weekend in 1973. I think my favorite Thanksgiving movie is Eli Roth’s hilarious Thanksgiving, though technically that’s just a trailer. (I gather from iMDB that a feature-length film is in the works – hell to the yeah!)

Thanksgetting, a Real Band – one of the funniest videos on FilmNet – isn’t really about Thanksgiving, but the title is appropriate for a holiday that’s more about getting than giving. It’s about two slackers named Matt and David. They’re basically like Bill and Ted or Jesse and Chester from DUDE, WHERE’S MY CAR? In terms of stupidity, they’re equally matched.

Matt and David are seniors in college. They’re the hosts of Disaster Industry Junction, a punk-rock show on the college radio station. Their shows seems to consist of yelling random things into the microphone. You get the feeling these guys wouldn’t have much to say if they were on their own, but together they get really worked up and blurt out whatever pops into their heads. They give each other a totally unjustified amount of confidence, to the point where they’re almost on the verge of saying something profound in a flaky, pseudo-philosopher kind of way. (”No man will compromise” or “We’re students of life.”)

These two dumbass friends want to score an interview with their favorite band, Thankgetting. They’re not exactly encouraged by the editor of the school paper, who aptly describes them as “total dick rags.” Matt and David proceed anyway, and the results are predictably disastrous. The heroes of BILL & TED and DUDE, WHERE’S MY CAR? were more innocent than these guys; the message of those movies was that stupidity was basically harmless in and of itself. Thanksgetting, a Real Band shows what happens when stupid people are egotistical – they can literally get people killed. The movie was made while George W. Bush was in office, so the heroes are definitely of their time.

We only get to hear one song by Thanksgetting, but it’s pretty killer. Terry Lieb also contributes a track, called “Perpetual Motion of the Proverbial Ocean.” It plays once during the movie and once over the end credits, and both times I nearly threw up from laughing.

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Tags: buddy movie, comedy, stupid, thanksgetting, thanksgiving