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The Marc Pease Experience

Paramount Vantage

Whatever happened to the days when a comedy film actually consisted of a decent plot, hilarious characters and events that were so funny you felt like wetting yourself? Are those days in the past or does the future look bright? When it comes to The Marc Pease Experience, the future looks unfortunately grim.

So many of us, ‘us’ meaning those who have left our teenage years behind, wish we could hold onto our lost youth. The good old days of late night parties, drinking all hours and believing we can make our dreams come true if we truly put our hearts and soul into it and believe in ourselves. For Marc Pease (Jason Schwartzman), his teenage wish becomes an obsession and reality to some degree, as he gets older. Marc Pease is a man of 24 living in the past. He was the star of his high school’s musical ‘The Wiz’ and after graduation, maintain his ponytail, dates a 17 year old and continues to sing in an a cappella group with the dream of recording their material in the studio with the help of his former mentor and musical theatre teacher Mr Gribble (Ben Stiller).

At first Stiller appears to be the kind of teacher everyone always dreamed about having in school; entertaining, approachable and most importantly fun, although as a musical theatre teacher sucks at singing. It is when Pease finds out about his girlfriends “after school activities” with Mr Gribble that his personality changes and things get a little too stupid and desperate to be funny. Up until this point the film consisted of a relatively interesting plot, two lead characters that had the potential to be interesting and entertaining and overall it was fairly enjoyable. Once Marc hears about Mr Gribble’s secret, his character gets annoyed, agitated and quite ridicules while the character of Mr Gribble becomes stuck-up, egotistical and unkind.

There is never a moment The Marc Pease Experience actually becomes funny and the comedy sets it, which is unfortunate. Original and quirky it may be, however funny it is not.

Michelle Moore