Film Review: We Fun

Last week I attended a screening of the Atlanta music scene documentary, We Fun, as part of the Atlanta Film Festival. Every good documentary I have ever seen either meticulously informs or tells a compelling story, and unfortunately We Fun does neither. The movie is a barrage of total randomness that ambles along playing show and tell for various ATL institutions. You see a badly shot band playing a song, you hear them say a couple of random things, then you see something else. For someone from Atlanta familiar with this scene, the kaleidoscope of sights and sounds will be nostalgic and enjoyable, but anyone being introduced to the Atlanta music scene for the first time will find very little in this movie to care about.

There had been some premature criticism of the documentary that it didn’t cover enough bands to represent the whole city, and if anything, I wish they had put less bands in this movie so they could have explored the central characters more in depth instead of wasting our time being democratic about giving enough bands screen time. For instance, the part with the Coathangers starts with a clip of them playing a song, then you see a short clip of one of the girls massaging one of the other girls, which is only entertaining for someone searching for bad softcore porn. Then you see a clip of one of the girls getting hit on and then complaining about it. Then we never see them in the movie again. Nothing about it feels connected to any other part of the film. Outside of the Black Lips, every band’s relevance is completely left to mystery outside of the fact they deserved a couple of minutes to be showcased. The Mastodon “cameo” is a complete tease. It reminded me of the movie Executive Decision where Steven Seagal got top billing and was killed off in the first 15 minutes. Putting the band’s name on the poster and then only showing 60 seconds of an interview is very disappointing, especially since their brief conversation outshines almost any other artist’s banter in the film.

While the Black Lips are far from my favourite local band, I was excited about a film centered around them because I thought they would be thoroughly entertaining in a movie, but every scene with them feels contrived and rather boring. Outside of the Atlanta Magazine photo shoot part and a few firework scenes, you never see them doing anything that far out. You hear from lots of people second hand about how crazy they are, but you don’t really get to see it. There is rarely a moment where the Black Lips aren’t painfully aware they are being filmed and purposely hamming it up for the camera. Even the part where Jared is yelling at Cole about the fire extinguisher feels fake. You’d think if you followed a band around for a year you could find one genuine glimpse at the people behind the act. But surprisingly, The Black Lips themselves don’t actually get very much talking time in a film that is mostly about them. Instead, sidekicks like Bobby Ubangi, Jessica Juggz, and King Khan appear to be the leads in the almost non-existent storyline of the film. Ubangi has some endearing moments, but the rest of the posse come off as a bunch of hollow, childish attention hogs that are too blatant and unsuccessful in their attempt to entertain. For example, the film spends an inordinate amount of time showing the Jessica Juggz pussy flambe thing and it totally de-mystified it for me and wasted a healthy chunk of the movie on something that just isn’t that interesting.

Of course not everything about the movie was bad, but the enjoyable parts were far and few between. Bradford Cox is always fun to hear talk, and there is a really cool time lapse shot where he is writing in a very busy room that is probably my favourite part of the film. For Atlantans, it is really fun to play Where’s Waldo with various random people you know, and I even saw myself clearly rocking out at a Rob’s House show. The Chunklet guy offered some good commentary, but I think Whirly Ball’s relevance was a bit over emphasized considering it is way out in the suburbs and has hosted maybe 10 shows ever. One of the movie’s weakest elements is its lack of explaining the relevance of things. I liked hearing about how Die Slaughter House came about, but having the guy list out every single release he had ever put out was too excessive. The editing of this movie just confused me, I mean if they choose the best material they had available, I would hate to see what got cut out. It’s like at one point some guy is talking about two theories about the Atlanta scene, and then after offering only one the film flashes to another scene and the viewer is totally left hanging.

As I recall, one of the guys in the Carbonas explains that he thinks there is a music scene like this in most cities, and I think here in lies the problem for We Fun; it never seems to reveal the subject it documents as being special or fascinating enough. I mean, every city has some punk kids that care more about partying than making good music, and We Fun never manages to establish Atlanta as anything more than this. People who are part of this crew like to purport to how connected everyone is, but the movie never demonstrates this outside the fact that everyone knows who the Black Lips are. You never see any of the bands hanging out with one another. You never see any real connections between anyone. It just feels like a ton of people trying to ride each others coattails. Whether this is actually true or not is another debate, but that is how it looks in the movie.

I think part of the problem is that it is documenting a scene after it blew up and reached its peak. If they had filmed everything a couple of years earlier when these bands were playing house shows and things were coalescing they probably would have had much more intriguing footage. But by the time this was made, the Black Lips, Deerhunter, and Mastodon were touring and recording outside the city for most of the year, so they weren’t really a reflection of what was happening in Atlanta at the time. Bradford Cox had already completely abandoned the We Fun on-stage aesthetic of wearing dresses and costumes that helped propel Deerhunter to fame in the first place. The movie never manages to find a story to tell because they started at the end of it. Also, everyone in the film is a bit too self-congratulatory for being part of scene that appears to be little more than a retro fad.

In the end, We Fun is a mediocre film about mostly mediocre music. If you are from Atlanta, it is worth seeing, but I don’t think it will impress many people OTP.

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10 Responses to “Film Review: We Fun”
  1. Kim Says: April 27th, 2009 at 12:06 pm

    I haven’t seen the film. But I think you make a good point about how the movie starts at the end of the story. I remember thinking that as I was reading updates during the filming. It seemed like they were concentrating the most on bands that had already gotten pretty big and were hardly considered “local” bands anymore. Interesting for folks who are fans of those bands, I suppose. But is it really a true reflection of the ATL indie music scene?

  2. Rich Says: April 27th, 2009 at 12:14 pm

    Interesting comments. I don’t know when I’ll see the film, but I’m sure I will eventually. Thanks for the review, D.

  3. CJ Says: April 27th, 2009 at 12:25 pm

    I will try to elaborate more later, but for now I say this: you hit the nail on the head, start to finish.

  4. chris Says: April 27th, 2009 at 2:12 pm

    No surprise about Mastodon being the stand out.

    Genuine is hard to come by these days and it’s refreshing as hell when you get a glimpse of it.

  5. dominick Says: April 27th, 2009 at 4:21 pm

    thanx

  6. john Says: April 27th, 2009 at 11:02 pm

    Your blog has quickly become my favorite place to read about Atlanta and in my opinion the most honest.Its really nice to read about this stuff from a local that really gets it. I’ve been looking forward to watching this film if anything out of voyeuristic curiosity. thanks for the great review.

  7. Anonymous Says: April 28th, 2009 at 7:31 am

    Ouch! Makes me feel better about not spending $10 to see it at the film fest last week.

  8. Adam Says: April 29th, 2009 at 12:37 am

    Only way you can make a documentary of the ATL jangle punk scene or whatever its called would be to get all the original footage from the Die Slaughterhaus and edited that shit together with interviews from the bands now. Which will never happen cos some asshole threw all the original tapes away! Its really sad cos there was awesome stuff, they had a camera taping lots of basement shows in the 2nd haus and they filmed the last day in the 1st haus fucking shit up and so much cool stuff.

    I don’t need to see this to know its a whole bunch of people trying to look cool for the cameras so the filmmakers will give them free coke.

  9. ZZ Says: November 4th, 2009 at 4:15 pm

    I agree. If they showed old footage of shows at Lennys.. neutron bomb etc.. old house shows it would have beeen better. The bands are too well established now to really convey that wild urgency they had back in the day.

  10. Katie Says: February 23rd, 2011 at 1:15 pm

    Does it establish how leaky our roof was at die saluterhaus? Or the perils of the keytars always bring on the fritz? Oh, *SO* punk rock ;)

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