Which isn’t to say the film is without charm, as Kirk ensures his screenplay is filled with characters so well rounded and (for the most part) likeable, you can’t help but find the somewhat contrived antics endearing. Ordinary World doesn’t have anything to say that you haven’t heard a million times before from other, similarly budgeted indie projects. If you were looking for a thesis on the human condition, presented in cinematic form, then you’d better look elsewhere. Everybody obsesses about what might have been and how it could have shaped their current, sub-par present, so the insights here aren’t exactly revolutionary. The story in Ordinary World is as old as narrative itself, primarily because a large portion of stories we consume are created by ageing white guys who wish to force-feed us the existential fears they face as they grow older. He hires a presidential hotel suite and invites his former bandmates (led by Fred Armisen) round for a party, only to realise just how much times have changed and how they have steadfastly refused to mature and accept adult responsibility. source: Universal Picturesįinding out it’s his 40th birthday, his brother ( Chris Messina) gifts Perry $1,000 of company money to host himself a big blow out. On his 40th birthday, his family have forgotten that it’s the big day, leaving him to tend to the same menial tasks that now define his existence: running house husband errands and working part time in the family owned DIY store. Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong stars in the lead role as Perry, a former rockstar whose band went on indefinite hiatus ten years ago so he could start a family with his wife ( Selma Blair). It is charming and gives you characters with crises worth investing in, even though the predictability from the opening moments helps you know exactly how everything will resolve. It possesses a narrative that manages to water down complex emotions into a neat three act structure that occurs over the course of one 24 hour period. Ordinary World, the sophomore effort from writer/director Lee Kirk, doesn’t have any particularly novel insight into middle age. In the movies, it is always a maudlin, Sundance Festival friendly time in your life filled with quirky behaviour and a warm smattering of nostalgia for the way things were or could have been. In real life, this is a complicated period which can become difficult to process emotionally. In pop culture, the midlife crisis has become something of a cliche that has long past saturation point following the waves of American Beauty imitators at the turn of the millennium. It has often been noted that no two people react to the dawning of maturity in the same manner, even if the cause of the anxiety is always the same. Those going through a midlife crisis are noted to act irrationally compared to their previous behaviour in a need to get out of a self-perceived rut. Armstrong that punctuate the proceedings and a cameo by Joan Jett are the high points.A midlife crisis is roughly defined as a period of anxiety and disappointment reflecting on your past as you approach middle age. To no one’s surprise, Perry eventually learns his grown-up lessons. Blended into that is one of the oldest plotlines in the parental genre: Will Dad remember his daughter’s talent show and make it there in time? Perry recklessly rents an expensive hotel room, hoping friends will join him there for a party that will bring back his punk-rock mojo. Here the script, by Lee Kirk, who also directed, could have gone a lot of amusing places, but instead it settles for familiar tropes. Perry is not entirely comfortable with his bland life, especially given that he is turning 40 and everyone seems to have forgotten his birthday. In the old days he was a trash-the-hotel-room renegade now his angst involves forgetting that it’s trash day. Now, though, he’s a man-child with a wife (Selma Blair), a couple of kids and a drab job working for his brother (Chris Messina) at a hardware store. Armstrong plays Perry, whose band was popular in CBGB-like clubs for a hot minute in the 1990s. Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day is usually pretty appealing when he dabbles in acting, and he’s appealing again in “Ordinary World.” But after a promising start the script lets him down, and the film turns into a predictable midlife-crisis yarn.
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