Review from Mystical Movie Guide

by Carl J. Schroeder

The Movie Hero is a likable guy living in Los Angeles, that city of celluloid dreams. He may be a failed actor or just insane, but he has an audience. He actually can see a little movie theatre, a window in the air that’s watching him on the silver screen, switching angles suddenly, following him everywhere. Of course we can’t see it, because we are it. So to entertain his audience, the Movie Hero follows and accosts the Suspicious Character, a seedy guy with a strange red guitar. The cops aren’t sympathetic to the Movie Hero, so they sentence him to counseling, where the Movie Hero meets the Love Interest, a pretty young therapist who is already engaged but to, hero explains, the Doomed Fiancee. While she thinks it over, Movie Hero advertises for a Side Kick to help him chase Suspicious Character.

The funny thing is, it all turns out to be true. Everyone thinks Movie Hero is crazy only because Suspicious Character has been psychically stealing their audiences. When Movie Hero helps Suspicious Character realize his potential to be a hero too, all the audiences are released, and among the new converts to living with an audience is, of course, the Love Interest who now embraces Movie Hero. • With terrific recognizable character actors and humor based in amok generic labeling of film cliches, this is the kind of movie buffs’ movie that is beloved at festivals, but then risks obscurity because most distributors won’t invest in such erudite one-trick entertainment. "The Projectionist" (1971) and "Zelig" (1983) also come to mind. However, self-referential post-modern cinema is often psychologically fascinating, and in the case of "The Movie Hero", even allegorically profound. The fact is that consciousness does grow by the exchanges between two roles, the participant and the observer. The challenge of incarnation is to become lost in the depths of situational illusions, then by involvement and expression climb back up to expanded awareness of potentials in staged reality. In this way cinema may be the final physical artform, because what’s next is to incorporate cinematic tropes into a personal mythology of self-observation, and then just more deliberately live. In other words, call it conscience, self-awareness, angel and devils on our shoulders, egos or esteem, we are already each toting our personal audiences. Some just make better use of the phenomenon than others, and if you don’t believe it, try a little meditation or journaling or talking in the mirror and see if you don’t grow. It’s incredible truly, bizarre and surreal, making possible all manner of projections, reflections, identifications, shared realities, archetypes, and other such wacky but effective constructs toward the manifestations of Self and Other, and their undying mutual attraction.

So while "The Movie Hero" plays for laughs, and is often quite funny before wearing thin, the film almost can’t help but stumble into poignant and mystifying territories that will haunt your inner everyman with possibilities. My favorite scene is when the bad guy softens and reforms just by discovering that he too has an audience, one that has been faithfully cheering for his inevitable redemption. Just to feel God is watching and cares can make all the difference, so powerful is the ultimate observer. dir./writer Brad T. Gottfred, stars Jeremy Sisto (Hero), Dina Meyer (Love Interest), Peter Stormare (Suspicious Character), Brian J. White (Side Kick), avail at spiritualcinemacircle.com

Themes: Altered States, Contact, Growth/Healing, God and Soul, Innocence, Mind, Reality, Soulmates

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