Full Grown Men

"Something changed and it wasn't me", laments Alby, the alleged protagonist of director David Munro's huge miscalculation, Full Grown Men, which somehow was pawned off as a road comedy to an alienated and unknowing audience.

I blame Netflix actually, for this little snippet which enticed me to rent this annoying indie:

To escape his responsibilities, Alby (Matt McGrath) embarks on a life-changing trek through Central Florida with his childhood friend, Elias (Judah Friedlander), to Diggityland, the theme park they loved as kids. On the way, ragtag characters show them the importance of moving on. Their journey takes an unexpected turn thanks to a whacky mermaid (Deborah Harry), a bitter ex-theme-park worker (Alan Cumming) and a clown bartender (Amy Sedaris).

Sounds fun and quirky, right? I love Deborah Harry and Amy Sedaris. Freidlander is bearable on 30 Rock and I can even stomach Alan Cumming's creepy bisexual aura on occasion. Having spent many of my formative years in sunny F-L-A, I certainly relate to the cheesy theme park kitsch and misfits that only that state can contain.

But a few clarifications are necessary. The "ragtag" characters comprise little more than 15 minutes of screen time. The other 63 (at least this misfire is thankfully short) are spent with the absolutely insufferable Alby. And we never even get to see Diggityland.

Don't get me wrong. I love a grating character. I long for the dislikable in my dramatis personae. I stay awake nights begging god almighty for more anti-hero pictures to be made. Malevolent personality traits are the very fiber of my viewing pleasure. I think Larry David is a decent, sympathetic, caring and misunderstood man. But I have never run across a character so irritating, obnoxious and repulsive as McGrath's Alby. He makes Jar Jar Binks seem positively high brow.

The picture's theme is to discuss the phenomenon of the "Peter Pan complex". A strain of arrested development seen in many thirty-ish males nowadays who've never had a war or financial strife to force them to grow up and become men. These are the guys who sit around on the internet all day in their parent's basements discussing science fiction, masturbating to images of female aliens, smelling their fingers after scratching their balls and plotting revenge on the cooler people who once slighted them.

In the case of Alby, an out of work cartoonist who collects action figures, we are supposed to believe this idiot man-child has sired a son with his seemingly normal wife. From his behavior throughout the film it becomes very questionable whether Alby would even know what a vagina looked like, let alone how to use one.

He is heading for a mid-life crisis without actually having lived the first half of his life.

And he's got a really stupid fucking haircut.

He storms out of the house claiming no one understands him, abandons his wife and son, and heads (where else?) to his Mom' place. She is a near catatonic who obligingly treats him like a child. He spends his days on her couch watching Kung-fu movies, eating cereal and playing the immature cut-up. He can't understand why everyone is in such a hurry to grow up.

What an annoying little assface.

He looks up his childhood friend Elias (Friedlander) in hopes of atoning for the cruel way he treated him and together they embark on a soul-less journey to a Florida amusement park called "Diggetyland". Elias tires of his bullshit halfway there (it takes us about an eighth of that time) and abandons him on the side of the highway. Alby ventures on, where he meets Deborah Harry's "mermaid", Joie Lee's "social worker" and Amy Sedaris' "clown bartender".

The film tries to answer the big questions with trite insights and droplets of feel-good affirmations. It even uses allegories involving the innocence and wonder of Down's Syndrome children (no joke) to peddle its nonsense. It misses every mark. It gets serious when it should be riotous and it snickers when it's depressing. It really wants you to like Alby and believe in his transformation, but it never really comes. He remains, at all times, an utter douchebag.

Yeah, it's just that awful. And it never answers the most puzzling question of all.  

How can you fuck up a cameo by the enchantingly psychotic Amy Sedaris?