STUART BLISS A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1998 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
The Apocalypse is at hand. Or maybe not.
Stuart Bliss has noticed that the birds are flying in the wrong direction, which is just one of many signs he has been picking up lately. There have been increased sunspot activities, high Geiger counter readings and a televangelist preaching directly to him. Or so he thinks. Is this all a paranoid delusion, or is he onto something big?
STUART BLISS, by first-time director Neil Grieve, is a black comedy with the emphasis on the darkness. Although it has sporadic touches of humor to temper the descent into madness, the monotonic story written by the director and the movie's star, Michael Zelniker, takes a relentless approach. Never sympathetic or complex, the story's protagonist, Stuart Bliss (Zelniker), is a played as a cipher. With the vacant stare of a zombie, Stuart movies through the picture like an automaton. The story itself holds so much promise that audiences will likely stay with it even though its slow pacing takes what would have been a fascinating short film and transforms it into a full-length, but soporific, movie.
The story opens well with some good, subtle humor. Stuart is a marketing wiz at a small company that buys up surplus goods. This week they landed a thousand handheld Geiger counters from a defense firm that has gone belly up. Stuart reckons that, with the right sales campaign, he can convince consumers that they are must-have items.
Stuart starts flipping out when his wife leaves him. Soon everyone seems out to get him. When they install a surveillance camera in the coffee room at work, his coworker nonchalantly tells him that, "businesses like ours lose a lot of money because of inefficiency." (Stuart's boss made this exact same admonition earlier in a different context.)
With actors playing multiple roles, the movie tries to confuse the audience in much the same way that Stuart is befuddled. The problem is that after a while the audience simply doesn't care any more. Why the director created a stick figure lead is the movie's real mystery. A little variety in the acting, some real emotion, and a few laughs would have helped enormously.
STUART BLISS runs 1:28. It is not rated but might be PG-13 for adult themes and would be fine for any teenager.
The movie is in the process of getting a distributor and thus does not yet have a release schedule.
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