Saturday, December 27, 2008

Incident at Loch Ness (2004; Zak Penn)


I am a total sucker for mockumentarys, I am very aware of it. I just love the potential of it all and the almost endless new doors that it can open. So on that note...



Two men with a digital camera choose to start a documentary filming the life and ideas of Werner Herzog at the same time he was planning on filming a documentry of his own about how fake the Loch Ness monster is. They all head out to Scotland for Herzog's film and things start to fall apart within the crew and Herzog's reality.

First off, this movie gets points for centering around Werner Herzog. I personally like to believe that when Zak Penn decided to try to make this mockumentary, he knew that people would never approve of having to watch him on film for that long. In order to compensate, he chose to switch the main director in the movie to Herzog. As an extra insurance policy, he also chose to make sure he came off as a complete idiot compared to Herzog. Whether or not he knows how close his fake personality represents his competence as a writer is a different story, however. Maybe even the story for his next screenplay ;).

Anyway, what mocumentarys come down to are the immersion. Do you feel like this is a real documentary? With this film the answer is a resounding "sometimes". When certain parts of the film hit, it can be very obvious that they took thought in setting the shots. That in return kills the feeling of spontaneity that these sort of films are supposed to possess. However, that is only some of the time, leaving the majority of the experience in the green. So to leave this review brief so I can write my next one, I will lend this film a...

Score: 3/5

Notes: Jeff Goldblum, Bikini Model

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I really like when people are expressing their opinion and thought. So I like the way you are writing