Every week Robert Saucedo shines a spotlight on a movie either so bad it’s good or just downright terrible. Today: Why so serious?
In the 2009 documentary Laughology, director Albert Nerenberg begins his film by explaining that he has lost his laughter. With a death in the family, a new child recently arrived and a handful of other assorted stresses, Nerenberg claimed to have reached a point in his life where he just couldn’t laugh.
Maybe I have the same affliction because I didn’t smile once during the 65 minute running time of Nerenberg’s film — a pretty damning accusation to make about a documentary on laughter.
Laughology is a self-serious, amateurishly made mess of a film — one whose faults quickly overtake the few interesting tidbits the documentary uncovers about the origins and culture of laughing.
The film explores the roots of laughter as a form of panting that followed fun physical activities that early mammals partook in. It also extensively covers laughter as a healing tool — with interviews with both new age laughter healers and scientists who are doing exhaustive research into the field.
There are a few pretty interesting bits in the film — such as an interview with professional laughers, a group of people whose noticeable laughter got them hired to record laugh tracks for the television show The Nanny. Also fascinating is a trip to visit an Inuit tribe whose culture of laughter helps them to survive long cold and lonely winters.
There are the seeds of a quality documentary nestled within Laughology. Unfortunately, these seeds are smothered to death with Nerenberg’s insistence of wrapping the documentary around himself like a dirty cape.
Nerenberg is of the same school of documentary filmmaking as Morgan Spurlock and Michael Moore in that the film is just as much about laughing as it is about the filmmaker himself. While Spurlock and Moore can be entertaining, though, Nerenberg has all the emotional detachment and blank emotionless charm of a robot.
Nerenberg may be a fun guy to hang out with in person but (perhaps due to his lack of laughter), the filmmaker comes across in his film as lacking in charm or charisma. This wouldn’t normally be a problem for a filmmaker. There are plenty of amazing documentarians that are as stiff as a board and completely uninteresting in interviews yet make captivating films because they focus their movies on captivating subject matter. Nerenberg keeps putting himself into the film as a plot device and constantly cuts to reaction shots from himself during interviews.
Every time the film cuts back to Nerenberg, the audiences are pulled out of the movie and this irreparably hurts the final project. I couldn’t tell if Nerenberg’s self-serious attitude about his loss of laughter was supposed to be funny itself. The somber tone he took when talking about his lack of joviality got pretty ridiculous at times — especially when coupled with ham-fisted dramatizations and cheesy editing. The movie has the tonality of a high school science project — it tries so very hard to take itself seriously and, in the process, becomes a joke in and of itself. Unfortunately, it’s not a very funny joke.
Laughology is mostly boring. Who knew watching people laugh could get so tiresome after a while. One of the major ideas of the film is the belief in contagious laughter. This is the thought that watching others laugh can make you laugh as well. If this was the case, then, Laughology should have been the funniest movie ever. It certainly has enough footage of people laughing.
Unfortunately, most of the footage reeks of insincerity. The people hired to laugh in front of a camera in Laughology have the acting ability of a third-rate porn star. I’m sorry, but there’s something’s you just can’t fake realistically.
The movie actually explores the idea of faking laughter as a way to lead to real laughter. It seems, though, that this only works if you’re the one faking the laughter. I tried to fake laugh at Laughology in the hopes it might improve my appreciation for the documentary. Instead, all I got was a headache.
