Too much of everything

This is How Movies Should Be Made

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

I have rated 755 films on IMDb; I've watched many more, I suspect. Finally, a film has caused me to write a review out of pure respect to the creators.If you like:surreal cinema, extreme violence, dark humour, transitions from guilty laughs to gut-wrenching, sickening imagery, thought-provoking intelligent drama which superficially looks and sounds unintelligentthen you may well feel the same about this film as I do.Quentin Tarantino is one of my all-time idols. If he had made this film the world would have raved about it.

To begin, I've always loved mind-bending and thought provoking movies (Salo, Enter the Void, Donnie Darko, Eraserhead, Pink Flamingos *haha John Waters isn't really "thought-provoking" but hey!* :P) I've been on a disturbing film kick and trying to see all of the "best" out there that I've missed- which is not many. A Serbian Film and Irreversible have been the past 2 nights features (which I enjoyed very much! Especially Irreversible)- so with all the recommendations, I decided to see Ex- Drummer. Of the 104 minutes...I'd only ask for about 80 of them back, but I WOULD ask for them back. I love foreign films and have no problem following the subtitles and getting the storyline, but this one just fell flatter than a sheet of paper for me. The "Mongoloid" song was stuck in my head admittedly. But during the last 20 minutes (by this point all my friends but one had left saying this film made no sense and they couldn't follow the plot), I found myself saying that if they just made the last moments into some bizarre heavy metal music video or something- I would have enjoyed it and found it to be very artistically pleasing. When Dries goes out on his destructive rampage and the music was playing, that's when I was finally INTO the film...sadly, it came way after I could appreciate anything. I really wanted to like this film, having heard such good things about it. I've also heard there is a book, which may be something I would enjoy more (sometimes the translation from book to film loses those little details that make the plot). I'm not giving up on this film- and perhaps would try it again sometime alone where I could really focus and check for something I've missed. But gosh, from what I experienced last night this movie just SUCKED. Really. For the first time in a long time, I'm very disappointed.

Being Belgian myself, I was able to read the book "Ex-Drummer" about a decade ago in its original language when I was 17 and I was pleasantly surprised by the eloquence, cynicism and misanthropy of author Herman Brusselmans. In spite of the dirty language, the book was pleasant to read and you really felt like you're exploring the mind of a lone intellectual hanging out with the lowest common denominators of Belgian society as part of a personal anthropological study in a world of despicable morons."Ex-Drummer" attempts to do the same but fails at every level. The main character is little different from the lowlife scumbags he mingles with, totally ruining the entire concept Brusselmans had made. The environment fails at its portrayal of the sad and depraved milieu it takes place in. The attempts at surrealism are superfluous and feel out of place. The screenplay is utterly boring and uninteresting. Without the eloquence and cynicism that's omnipresent in the book, the film is entirely void of content. Add to all this a few pretty disgusting scenes and you have a recipe for an unnecessary and barely watchable attempt at making an art house film. I would not recommend this film to anyone.

I kept waiting for this film to reveal itself in terms of satire, dark humour, social commentary - whatever. I am not overly familiar with Belgian culture, but I am left to assume this film perhaps has more relevance in its country of origin.The film is supposed to be about a band, comprised of "handicapped" men - who are looking for a handicapped drummer so that they can play at a rock festival. The handicaps of the members, as I understood it, are that one is a rapist, one is deaf, and one has an arm that he can not move because his mother caught him masturbating at a tender age. Right off, I'm a little lost. Perhaps if some of these performances had been convincing or had any depth, I would see the humour. But Ex Drummer fails to convince me that being a rapist is a handicap, or that the afflictions of a man who lives in addicted squalor while beating his coke-whore wife - both who eventually terminally neglect their infant child, are downplayed by his "handicap" of being a deaf musician. Let's move on, the band finds their drummer, a successful writer who, out of bourgeois ennui wants to submerge himself in the sordid underbelly of society and whose magical "handicap" is his inability to play the drums. He manages this with frequent trips home to his posh-toddy wife to partake of threesomes and panoramic views from their well-appointed condo. One of the bands rivals at the upcoming music festival will be fronted by a lead-man called "Big Dick". A fair amount of the film is dedicated to his big dick, including a life-sized tour of his wife's vagina, which we see two men standing in, and is referred to as her "blasted out rat". We also get to watch a rather drawn out scene of a gay man trying to put his pants back on and walk down the street after taking the 20 inch "big dick" in a toilet stall. Ridiculous? Yes. Funny? Not so much. Shocking? Maybe if you are a 12 year old. Ah, yes Big Dick is also a racist - apparently he feels bad that he has to pay for the "darkies" out of his dole allowance.For something to pass as satire, or social commentary I think the audience needs to be able to identify with the afflicted. It would be impossible to do that with the two-dimensional caricatures put forward in this film with little to no character development except the wanna-be hip try-to-shock me intro by Dries (the writer). It all just seems like misogyny, gay-bashing and racism. The plot and pacing are bad to awful. Characters, like I said, completely uninterested in each and every one of them including the dead toddler of the marginalized addict parents.Comparing this film to Trainspotting is just wrong. Clearly the obvious references - gratuitous vomiting in filthy toilet stalls, dead babies of addicts and people walking on the ceiling, all of which you'll see here - were memorable moments of that (vastly superior) film. And I guess both are book adaptations. I don't really think it's appropriate to compare one film to another when the similarities begin and end with fairly obvious mimicry.The trailers for this film make much use of "special" effects: walking on the ceiling, repeated car-hitting reminiscent of Jonathan Glazer's music video for Rabbit in your Headlights. But the movie doesn't bear this out stylistically. And anyway all this stuff is almost a decade old - hardly fresh. Sitting through this film there's no sense of stylistic innovation - like I said the production isn't bad, but it's nothing special outside of these few effects. In short, don't let the packaging fool you - this is not a cutting-edge, stylie piece.Some people have said this film isn't for the feint of heart. I've sat through many films that have earned that title, the most memorable at this point would be Noe's "Seul Contre Tous" which I watched to the end at the Toronto Festival after fully half the theatre had walked out. I don't think I'm typically prudish, queasy or easily-offended.This film is not shocking. I felt no real revulsion toward it, but I did not feel any connection to any of the characters. Nor did I appreciate it as a dispassionate survey of a marginalized sub-culture as some have implied. I think it was just poorly directed. Maybe being Belgian helps with this one - but maybe not.