2024 Glasgow Film Festival Review

Lousy Carter earns its title. It’s a cynical, depressing outing that, like its anti-hero protagonist, fundamentally lacks self-awareness. Its goal of exploring how a hapless figure can still find some kind of purpose in life is an interesting one, but it rarely taps into the nuances of this. Watching it is akin to being forced to take a train journey with someone hurling abuse at the conductor. It’s not merely bad – it’s discomforting in its unpleasantness.

David Krumholtz plays the titular protagonist – Lousy a mean-spirited nickname he was given as a child in response to his appalling golf swing. That he kept the nickname reflects the defeatist way he views the world. A friend brands him as a man-baby, and it’s a fitting description. He’s a failed animator whose 15 minutes of fame earned him a position teaching F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby to post-graduates and a few other prospects. He’s a sleazeball who sleeps around, including with his best friend’s wife, all while offering pessimistic outlooks on life. If that sounds like a soul-sucking entity you wouldn’t want to hang out with then you have a good perception.

Lousy’s world only gets grimmer when he is diagnosed with cancer and given six months to live. An undeniably horrible predicament. Other people may seize life by the hand and try to tick off as much of their bucket list as possible. Not Lousy though. He’s long since given up on life as worth living and so decides to keep up his pessimism instead. He’s going to die anyway so why bother? He does seek one radical change though, and that is to at last have a stable relationship, or at least a fun sexual one. He decides to fulfill this by pursuing one of his students.

Premises about curmudgeons can amount to wonderful stories. The Holdovers, an excellent movie about a grumpy man, was only released a few weeks ago. But there is often a discernible arc for said character. Even if the git doesn’t necessarily end the film happy or enlightened, they have at least softened their perspective or learned a life lesson that shifts their viewpoint. Lousy has no character arc. He starts the film miserable and bored and ends the film just as dissatisfied, the only real change is that he has breached his duty of care as a teacher. Lousy is so bitter and angsty that it comes off as uncomfortable. He’s a self-pitying creep; the kind of man you would cross the street to avoid, not want to get to know better.

The film doesn’t seem to be condoning him, but it isn’t doing much to hold him able either. The film’s utilisation of dry humour, almost entirely delivered through dialogue, acknowledges the immorality of Lousy’s actions, but its execution is so deadpan that it comes across as inauthentic rather than funny. It seems to exist more as a form of lampshading than it does as a dissection of theme. In the right hands, dry comedies can be inventive and engaging. Think The Big Lebowski or In Bruges. But there needs to be an earnestness or comion behind the darkness that just doesn’t seem to be here with Lousy Carter. It’s content with dwelling in its own misery and seems eager to drag the audience down into its murky depths with it. If its grand lesson is not to be so cynical then it fails because it offers Lousy no redeeming qualities, other than perhaps his decision to rein in his lust for his student, which is not a thematic lesson but a basic principle. Not being a nonce is about as morally courageous as not drowning someone. It doesn’t make you noble – it makes you normal.

Newcomer Luxy Banner plays Gail, the student of whom Lousy forms a relationship with. She has natural charisma, and the character’s role as a laid-back hopeful makes her a decent foil to Lousy. She is the saving grace of the film. But none of the other characters have any attractive personas or reasons to care about them. Lousy regularly hangs out with his best friend, the pseudo-intellectual Kaminsky (Martin Starr), whose dry observations and “so what” attitude make him wooden and irritating. Even when genuine tragedy occurs, such as a death in the family, the characters’ indifferent attitudes render them emotionally moot. In presenting a blunt world where apathy is both the status quo and the thematic point, the filmmakers have made a fatal miscalculation that has resulted in a repugnant, dishonest geek show.

Just as insincere is the filmmaking: this is shoddily made and drably executed. Rarely does it venture beyond shot-countershot techniques, comfortable presenting its information and themes through dialogue rather than creative motifs or visuals. If this was meant to be the point, to reflect Lousy’s worldview, then it doesn’t work as it doesn’t for the clunky cutaways or the appalling sound design. One such scene features a conversation between Gail and Lousy, in which the sound of Gail opening her soft drink can is louder than Lousy’s dialogue. Perhaps that was the can’s way of trying to save us.

Frustrating at best and revolting at worst, its characters are despicable, its craftsmanship is uninspired, and its thematic arguments are vapidly cynical, and sold without conviction. 78 minutes still wasn’t short enough. From its emotionally hollow inciting incident to its copout ending that even Monty Python wouldn’t have the brass neck for, it depresses rather than entertains, and enrages rather than enlightens. Lousy Carter is a film that makes the viewer crave the dentist instead.

★

Playing as part of the 2024 Glasgow Film Festival / David Krumholtz, Martin Starr, Olivia Thirlby, Jocelyn DeBoer, Macon Blair, Stephen Root / Dir. Bob Byington / Magnolia Pictures / 15