Total Performance and The Paper Trail
Review by Paul Preston
Welcome to Today I Watched…, a series of posts documenting my new challenge – watch a movie a day for the rest of my life. Keep coming back to TheMovieGuys.net to find out what I watch each day…and get my take on it.
When I see a movie that’s a new release in theaters or for home viewing, I’ll give it a proper review in the “Reviews”, otherwise, I’ll write about it here.
April 14, 2017 – Total Performance
Total Performance has a great premise. Cori is an actress with a unique job – she employs her acting skills alongside clients who want to practice having difficult conversations like “we’re breaking up”, “you’re fired”, etc. The client gets a run-thru with Cori under their belt and they feel better going into the actual talk. There’s a lot to unpack with that – Can it ever get dangerous? Does she ever step over the line? What’s the toll it takes on her? So much to explore, it’s a concept that should probably be dealt with in a feature or even a TV show. That being said, I believe writer/director Sean Meehan tried to work a couple of styles into the film and the latter ones didn’t work. The film starts out curious and almost cute, and ends up trying to pull off real drama. The drama felt forced, as if Meehan felt there needed to be consequences to the characters’ actions, but that was nothing I was asking for, based on everything that had come before.
Given how many shorts I’ve seen recently, this one is at least competent, and although that sounds like a slight, it really is high praise. A poke around the internet shows good reviews for Total Performance. You can definitely see a Limitless or Early Edition-type future for the expansion of this concept and I hope the filmmakers get that chance. Spreading out the story over time would probably smooth out transitions between moods. If you’ve got sixteen minutes, come to your own conclusion:
Total Performance from Sean Meehan on Vimeo.
April 15, 2017 – The Paper Trail
I was perusing itsashort.com and wanted to check out a comedy. The website offered up the option of The Paper Trail. I can’t say it’s a laugh-riot, but it’s an effective short. It tells the life of a government document that waits in a pile to be shredded. The document describes its life, from hopefully policy to forgotten shred-bait. The solemn seriousness of the paper’s voice-over lets you know right away you’re not in for wacky hijinks, but the voice casting (Michael F. Cahill) is spot-on, lending grave importance to something that you never think about – what does the paper make of all this? Excellent technical contributions help drive the short’s point home. Check it out HERE.
