“Punching the Clown” is wel come proof that there remains at least one industry in which the US can compete with New Zealand: the parody folk-song business.
This low-key, low-budget, high-coolness mockumentary about a hapless singer of comic songs will fill the “Flight of the Conchords”-size hole in your psyche, assuming you’ve noticed that the HBO show about N.Z.’s finest humorous folkies was canceled.
Playing himself as though it were the role he was born to do, singer-songwriter Henry Phillips tries to make it in the Los Angeles coffeehouse and open-mike circuit while sponging off his brother (Matt Walker), an unemployed actor whose best gig lately has been playing Batman at kids’ birthday parties.
Henry’s shuffling awkwardness and polite manners keep landing him in George Costanza-style misunderstandings, such as when his innocent request about the provenance of an especially tasty bagel inspires a chain reaction of frustration and misunderstanding that leads to his being denounced as a neo-Nazi. Soon angry mobs are protesting his every appearance and suggesting he should change his name to “John Cougar Concentration Camp.”
Also, he learns that when performing at a Christian fund-raiser, you probably shouldn’t do a song about sniffing cocaine off the lady-parts of a hooker.
Bonus: The movie has a sure sense of LA and a bionic eye for the lower rungs of the business of show. In one bitterly funny scene at a party, guests spontaneously create a rejection roundelay as each of them works the room sucking up to his betters while blowing off inferiors.
Some of the bits run, but Phillips’ deadpan slacker charisma makes him fully ripe for exploitation as the star of a TV show. See his movie now, brag about your discerning taste for undiscovered talent later.