Comments on: I’m Still Here

By: Voicedude

Voicedude — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 23:02:08 +0000

There is nothing ‘clever’ about this movie. Phoenix and Affleck thought they could wing their way through a lame, Jackass/Borat knockoff while being neither clever writers, comedians, nor improvisationalists. Since, like the lame ‘reality star’ performances he derides at the top and yet copies, both the ‘performances’ and ‘improv’ are as boring as they are illl-conceived, all he has to go on past his one-note character is to unfortunately throw a great deal of the REAL Joaquin Phoenix in front of the camera. And what we see, character or not, is not very likable. With plenty of negative behavior, pointlessly bad language, and enough puke, piss, and dick jokes to make a 13-year-old giggle for an hour, one does not get the feeling we’re in for a biting satire. Phoenix, Affleck, and company act like the kind of sophomoric jerks that Johnny Knoxville has been trying to move AWAY from. But it’s not ‘real’ see? ‘Staged’, get it? OK, then ‘why should we care, really?’, I say. I share the disdain for reality TV Phoenix claims at the beginning, but trying to emulate it with no real satirical point makes it WORSE than the intended lampoonee.

We get that it’s a hoax – and a lame one, at that – but do we really have to see that one trick pony beat like a dead horse for two hours? No, no comment, observation, slant, moral, nor punchline awaits us at the merciful end. Yeah, we get it all right: it was a joke. The kind of joke that some feel compelled to repeat over and over and over and over and over again until you laugh, dammit! But nothing but a lame, lame joke.

Too bad the real joke is on Joaquin Phoenix’s career…

By: maybeimamazed02

maybeimamazed02 — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 18:38:25 +0000

Thanks for this review: it convinced me once and for all NOT to see the film.

I really don’t get the point behind the film OR the revelation that it was all fake. There are ways to do a hoax right: Andy Kaufman was so weird it was funny. JT LeRoy had this whole fucked-up family/Svengali story behind it. The Blair Witch Project, slow as the pacing was, was genuinely suspenseful and a good ghost story, even after the public found out it wasn’t true. A hoax has to initially draw people in. This obviously doesn’t.

I thought Joaquin Phoenix was brilliant in Walk the Line and excellent in Two Lovers, but his "downfall" and/or attempted rap career is of no interest to me whatsoever, real or fake.

By: Helen

Helen — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 10:53:29 +0000

One thing (about the only thing) that I learned in high school economics that’s always stuck with me is the concept of opportunity cost. The opportunity cost to me of I’m Still Here is the movie that could have played on that screen this week at the Landmark Keystone Art Cinema. The opportunity cost to Phoenix, Affleck et al is much greater.

By: Michael Donley

Michael Donley — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 12:12:36 +0000

I don’t know why Affleck would come out and admit it’s all a fake at this point and time when most people haven’t seen the movie?? Now, I definitely don’t want to see it.
People went to go see Blairwitch Project, because they did a good job not letting the cat out of the bag until weeks after its release. The sequel tanked, because everyone knew it was 100% fake.