Heckler
Heckler
R | 04 November 2007 (USA)
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HECKLER is a comedic feature documentary exploring the increasingly critical world we live in. After starring in a film that was critically bashed, Jamie Kennedy takes on hecklers and critics and ask some interesting questions of people such as George Lucas, Bill Maher, Mike Ditka, Rob Zombie, Howie Mandel and many more. This fast moving, hilarious documentary pulls no punches as you see an uncensored look at just how nasty and mean the fight is between those in the spotlight and those in the dark.

Reviews
TrueHello

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

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Winifred

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

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Catherina

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

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Celia

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

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SeriousJest

The film begins by focusing on hecklers, as the term is generally used: people who attend live performances, like a stand-up comedy show, and attempt to interrupt the performers and shift the attention to themselves. I think an overwhelming amount of the public will agree that those people are annoying and in the wrong. Nobody is there to see the heckler. If you don't enjoy the performance, don't clap, don't smile, or simply leave…but don't interrupt everyone else's experience. Live-performance hecklers are like the ugly girl who CBs her friends at a party because nobody's talking to her. I enjoy seeing good comedians rip those people apart…and here's a secret: the guy with the mic will usually win that battle.The brunt of this documentary, however, focuses on extending the term "heckler" to critics in general, including movie reviewers. To that end, Kennedy confronts people who have written scathing reviews about him, effectively demonstrating that they focus more on creatively bashing him than actually explaining why they don't like his projects or offering constructive criticism. He also points out that many of these individuals appear to be people whom you probably wouldn't want to have a conversation with, let alone take movie advice from them.Several of the performers interviewed make the point that most critics haven't ever produced a successful piece of performance art themselves. I respect that argument for the concept that reviewers should be sensitive to the fact that producing creative material is not easy. However, I would counter that I don't need to be a chef to tell you that something doesn't taste good to me. I may not have a "refined palate," but for people who like the kind of movies I like, like the way I think, or otherwise relate to me, my opinion may actually be useful, despite whether the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences agrees with me. I mean, who the hell makes up AMPAS anyway? Google it. It's pretty interesting.Kennedy and his diverse cast of performers also discuss how the internet has empowered a slew of people to take cheap shots at artists from the safety of anonymity. He compares the internet to a big bathroom wall, where anyone can just write whatever they want. I agree that it's much easier to rip someone mercilessly when you don't have to face them. On the other hand, as some of the cast acknowledged, a review that actually intelligently identifies what the critic sees as flaws in the performance can be a very valuable learning tool for the artist. Kennedy just ponders why you'd have to be a jerk about it.Personally, I like the fact that we no longer have to rely on a select group of "published" individuals to tell us what's good and what isn't. A site like Rotten Tomatoes is very useful because it aggregates the opinions of critics as a percentage of likes versus dislikes, and distinguishes them from the opinion of the site users at large. It's a good starting point for determining whether you want to spend your valuable time watching a particular movie…but if you trust the opinion of a particular person, because you relate to him or her in some way, or because they have a good track record of recommendations, that can be even more useful. We at Live from the ManCave (www.livemancave.com) hope to be those reviewers for you, and we're thankful that the internet allows us to bypass all of the obstacles to voicing our opinions that existed just a couple of decades ago.Moreover, the same medium that allows anybody to voice their opinion about art also allows any aspiring artist to bypass the old obstacles to publishing their art. For example, before the internet, talented artists had to court the attention of A&Rs to get people to listen to their material. A select group of people decided what music the public at large got to hear, and if one of them wasn't having a good day, your song might get tossed before the first beat of the first track reached a speaker. Nowadays, you can post your song directly to a social media site and let the people determine for themselves whether they like it. "Shares" and "Likes" are easy to count. A&Rs can't ignore someone with a million Twitter followers.The film also acknowledges that artists ultimately control how criticism affects them. The point is driven home that artists are people, and like any individuals who throw maximum effort and hope into their projects, their feelings are going to be hurt when that project is negatively reviewed. However, as many of the interviewed performers state, artists have to acknowledge the intelligent criticism, discard the useless insults, be strong enough to brush negativity off their shoulders, and keep doing what they love with maximum effort. It may not be easy to do, but it's what you have to do if you want to be successful. Once the critics sense a particular weakness or sensitivity, the sharks will come feasting for blood, and it won't get any easier, as Kanye West has discovered the hard way.Regardless of on what side of the foregoing controversy your opinion falls, this documentary does a good job of highlighting the issues in an entertaining way, and provoking thoughtful conversation on the subject. The film is well-edited, fast-paced, and generally interesting. While it definitely seems to be biased against the hecklers and critics, some of the interviews are not always a clear-cut win for Kennedy. The documentary appears to be kind of tongue-in-cheek, as Kennedy often acts sensitive and whiny when receiving criticism, but the film is also edited as to poke fun at him. In the end, you realize that he gets it. Don't be hatin'.

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glassmonovitch

This film is OK, but not one that I'll be re-watching anytime soon, or recommending to friends. The first 20 minutes or so are great. This section focuses on how stand up comedians are impacted by hecklers, and how they deal with them on stage, and emotionally. Suddenly, the film focuses solely on film critics. This starts out interesting, but drags on for the remainder of the film.One thing I found offensive was a point that was hi-lighted a few times in the film: What have YOU created? What film experience do YOU have to be able to judge me!? I hate this elitist attitude from performers. I'm not a chef, but I know when food tastes like poop.All in all, I really wish the film would have stuck to hecklers because that part of the film was interesting and funny. The second part of the film that focused on critics was interesting, but not nearly as entertaining, and dragged on for too long.

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hedcraft

These comedians want you to like them so much, you can almost tell they're on the verge of tears knowing that somebody thinks they suck. It starts out strong, with some great comics talking about how much they love verbally destroying hecklers, but quickly degrades into a string of second-rate comics talking about how much it sucks when people say mean things about them. They run out of actual footage after about a half hour, so the last half of the movie is Jaime Kennedy tracking down people who gave him a bad review and trying to make them feel bad by talking about how chicks totally want to screw him. It's entertaining in the same way it would be to watch a group of autistic children diving for quarters. You'll probably laugh, but you won't feel good about it after.

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Steve Pulaski

If Heckler is anything for Jamie Kennedy, the film's prime target as someone who has gotten enough heckling for a whole night of comedy acts, it's a feasible and marginal catalyst for all the hate he has gotten over the years from not only critics but people who just seem cold to the idea of "accepting him." Having not seen many of his works, only Malibu's Most Wanted which wasn't particularly compelling but I've without a doubt seen worse, I feel the man is just the public eye's punching bag. He took the throne from Pauly Shore and Tom Green (both men appearing in this film as well) and decides to release his anger and frustration to the hecklers of the world.A "heckler" is someone with intentions of curbing a person's current formal state. The term is commonly associated with comedy acts, when one arrogant loudmouth decides it would be fun and brilliant to disrupt the performer by yelling something unnecessary at them like, "you suck" or something along those lines. The first twenty minutes of this seventy-nine minute documentary focus directly on those kind of people, and have a variety of comedians such as Arsenio Hall, David Cross, Louie Anderson, and Lewis Black weigh in on the concept and how they've dealt with a heckler in their career. The remainder of the documentary takes the questionable turn as it then begins to attack film critics and how miserable, sulky, pretentious, idiotic, lazy, evil, and out of touch they are if they rate a product harshly. As an aspiring film critic myself, I've heard the argument frequently that if you've never made a film you have no right to criticize it. It's a valid point, but by saying that, you're stripping someone of their basic right to have an opinion. Do I need to be president to openly dislike one of his mandates/laws? Do I need to be a chef to say I didn't like this person's food? Do I need to be a landscaper to say I didn't like the look of this yard? Do I need to be a website designer to say I don't like the look of a particularly website? By saying that one is not qualified to state their opinion or look at a film deeply, picking out its flaws and examining its layers pretty much means that one can not have an opinion on pretty much anything unless they've done or experienced it themselves. It's not a sustainable point. One needs to accept the fact that by putting out a piece of work that the ones who pay money to view it in some way, shape, or form have a right to voice their opinion on it. I'm not condoning the action of listlessly shouting at a performer, but everyone has and should have the right to give a mature opinion on something regardless of it being positive or negative. I would've thought many of these comedians, doing a job that is very public and very open, knew that ahead of time.I'm also not huge on the way this film compares hecklers to critics. First off, comparing film/media critics to some random, ignorant scrub yelling insults to a performing act is a facile, invalid point. One party professionally evaluates art and the meanings it could spawn, while the other gives a very immature, childish statement in an act of unnecessary disrespect. They're incomparable, except in the regard that they could potentially make the party at hand feel bad about themselves, which is not my personal goal when writing/publishing a review. When I give a poor review to a film, I give it to the film and not to those involved. I didn't think I needed to attach a disclaimer like this when I began writing.Chunks of the short feature are devoted to other little ways different men in the business of film respond to criticism. Noted director Uwe Boll staged a boxing match between him and his critics, which I honestly can't believe. Unique it is, but if someone didn't like your film, what will make them like it if you beat them bloody in a ring, and what does that say about your acceptance of dissent? Eli Roth states the "death of film" are focus groups, little screenings of the first/second/third cuts of films where a private audience (usually made up of the film's target demographic) is invited to watch the film and voice what they like and didn't like. Instead of writing it off as a way for more people to bitch and moan about what they didn't like, filmmakers should think of these groups as ways to not only improve on their own work but connect with their demographic in a stronger way.While it appears my criticism with Heckler's negative portrait of film critics runs a mile deep, this is nonetheless an interesting documentary, that serves as much more than Kennedy's therapeutic method of coping with sour critics/public. I just kind of wish any of the talents involved would've recognized that their attitude towards critics comes off as bitter and angry, when it's almost cemented in the job description for an actor/comedian. And I'd like to challenge Lewis Black on the fact that when someone's young they do not want to be a critic of any kind. At age five I knew that I wanted to be someone who wrote essays and reviews of films, giving ideas and different views of the medium.Full, more complete review on http://stevethemovieman.proboards.com

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