Entertainment (2015 film)
5.8 /10 1 Votes
81% Rotten Tomatoes Cinematography Lorenzo Hagerman Initial DVD release 23 February 2016 (USA) | 5.7/10 IMDb 1.5/4 Roger Ebert Music director Robert Donne | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Produced by Ryan ZacariasRyan LoughGeorge RushBrooke BernardRick AlversonPatrick HiblerAlex Lipschultz Written by Rick AlversonGregg TurkingtonTim Heidecker Starring Gregg TurkingtonTye SheridanJohn C. ReillyLotte VerbeekMichael CeraAmy SeimetzDavid YowTim HeideckerDean StockwellNatalie ContrerasAnnabella LwinTonantzin CarmeloDustin Guy Defa Initial release 15 September 2016 (Germany) Cast Similar John C Reilly movies, Dark comedies | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Entertainment official trailer
Entertainment is a 2015 American drama film co-written and directed by Rick Alverson, starring Gregg Turkington, Tye Sheridan, and John C. Reilly. The film follows an unnamed comedian (a variant of Turkington's long-standing character Neil Hamburger) as he performs in various locations where the audience is either hostile or indifferent to him. He receives advice from his cousin John (Reilly), and as he continues to tour, his performances begin to lower in quality and some audience members become hostile. Alverson, Turkington and Tim Heidecker co-wrote the film.
Contents
The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015. It was released in a limited theatrical release by Magnolia Pictures in North America, and through video on demand in November 2015, receiving a generally positive reception from film critics.
Cast
Production
Gregg Turkington had previously appeared in director Rick Alverson's The Comedy. Alverson proposed to Turkington the idea of making a film based on his character Neil Hamburger. The two discussed what Hamburger's character would be like off stage, both finding that his life would be dull and not very dynamic. Turkington had been previously offered to make a film or television programs revolving around the character approaching people in the street which he felt was wrong for the character and was far more interested in a film that he described as a "Two-Lane Blacktop” art film kind of vibe."
The film's script was written by Alverson, Turkington and Tim Heidecker. The film's dialogue is improvised. Turkington described the dialogue as "really more based on descriptions of the tone or the mood that was needed in particular scenes, and kind of running with that.
Turkington and Alverson initially disagreed on some aspects of the Neil Hamburger character, such as never showing the character without his glasses and never showing the character talking in a normal voice. Alverson felt the film wouldn't be credible if Turkington constantly spoke in his Neil Hamburger voice. Among the locations Hamburger visits in the film is an aircraft boneyard. No actual tours take place at the location which was part of a military facility in Mojave, California, which allowed them a few hours to film where they could only shoot the film in certain directions.
Release
Entertainment premiered at the Next Section at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 2015.
Reception
Entertainment was acclaimed by film critics. The film has an 80% approval rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on forty reviews, with the consensus: "As brilliantly and uncomfortably confrontational as its protagonist, Entertainment is a boundary-blurring exercise in cinematic misanthropy that more than lives up to its title." Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score, gave the film a 65 out of 100 based on thirteen reviews from critics.