Live Free or Die

Live Free or Die (Gregg Kavet & Andy Robin, 2007) [3]

The quirky indie comedy is starting to go the way of the studio romantic comedy, so full of standard archetypes and characters that it's hard to make it good. This film, from two former Seinfeld writers, should be a lot funnier but falls back into the pitfalls of quirky just for the hell of it characters and a plot that doesn't really go anywhere. The plot issue isn't that big but the characters here are so unlikable and treated with such indignation by the writers that the end result is completely homeless. Kavet and Robin are so concerned with their convoluted plot and character quirks that they forgot to make a comedy with laughs in it. Granted, there are a few but they mostly involve the hilarious comedian Judah Friedlander, who sadly, isn't in this film enough. The two main characters are treated with such disrespect by the writer/directors by having so little intellect that it's insulting to the viewer as well. Aaron Stanford plays a two-bit loser that tries too hard to be a hardened criminal. Besides being stupid, his character is so over the top in his wannabe macho nature that he's completely unlikable and lacks any real personality. The other, played by Paul Schneider, is even worse. He plays the dim bulb and is there to be laughed at and nothing else. There's something wrong with playing a character's lack of intelligence purely for laughs and not giving him any humanity. I may be a cynic at heart but I like my films to have some human qualities in them and these two walking cartoon characters are so blatantly offensive to my sensibilities that I wanted to strangle the ones responsible for them. It's too bad because the story itself does have some funny moments but the down ending is completely off base for the rest of the film. This film's lack of consistency makes it a muddled mess that doesn't work at all.