Danny Roane: First Time Director DVD Review
Posted by Ryan Byers on 11.20.2007
It's an odd day when you see a writer on a site full of twenty-something males praising the work of James Van Der Beek.
Danny Roane: First Time Director is, appropriately enough, the directorial debut of Andy Dick. Dick also stars as the film's title character, a sitcom actor who hit rock bottom after appearing on Jimmy Kimmel in a drunken haze and urinating on both Kimmel and Frankie Muniz. Once he dries out, he determines that the next step for his career is the production of Ded Drem, a motion picture based loosely on his substance abuse problems. As one might expect from a dark comedy dealing with this subject matter, Roane falls off the wagon during the process of making the film-within-a-film, and this is where the meat of Danny Roane lies.
This is the point in my review where I would normally launch in to a more detailed breakdown of the plot, but, frankly, there isn't much of a plot to discuss beyond the three sentence blurb above. The movie, which is shot as a "mockumentary," isn't really a cohesive narrative. It feels more like a series of skits loosely connected to one central concept. That's not necessarily a bad thing, even if it does impede my normal writing style. In fact, it's not all that uncommon in the mockumentary genre, which has produced some of my favorite films. With the majority of those movies having come from Christopher Guest, it was interesting to watch somebody other than the guru of Guffman taking on the genre. I know that the majority of people reading this review will be shocked by this revelation, but Andy Dick did not live up to the high standard set by Guest and his films. The primary difference between the two is that Danny Roane felt far more scripted and micro-managed than a Best in Show or a Mighty Wind. Large sections of those movies are completely improvised, and, in addition to providing me with a ridiculous level of respect for the actors, it allows the fake documentaries to still have a touch of realism to them. Because the actors are coming up with their lines on fly, they sound more like real human beings who are being interviewed and/or facing real life situations. Though I have no doubt that there was some improvisation taking place in Danny Roane, it did not appear to be nearly as prevalent, and that hurt the quality of the movie in comparison to other members of its genre.
That's not to say, however, that Danny Roane doesn't have its funny moments. It certainly does. Oddly, though, none of those moments involve Andy Dick. One would think that in a film that he wrote and directed, his character would at least be involved in some of its more humorous moments. This is not the case. Instead, Dick is left doing what he always does in every movie or TV show in which he takes part. He yells a lot, he flails about, he occasionally falls, and he comes off as one of the most obnoxious human beings on the planet. As a mater of fact, I'd like to take a second and point out a few things that Dick does throughout the movie that ceased to be funny around 2003:
1.) Using the word "retarded" simply for the sake of using the word "retarded" is typically not funny.
2.) Identifying an individual by his or her racial or ethnic group out of the blue is typically not funny.
3.) Gratuitous visuals of Adolf Hitler and Nazi iconography are typically not funny.
There was a time when all of these things would've gotten a laugh out of me, but the fact of the matter is that, in 2007, they, along with most other "shock" humor, have been run in to the ground to the point that they look like desperate pleas for attention instead of jokes. We've all seen South Park. We don't need to see it 5,000 more times.
That being said, there are individuals in the movie who are funny. Oddly enough, the two guys who put forth the best performances are the ones who are typically not thought of as comedians. I'm referring to James Van Der Beek and Anthony Rapp, who both play themselves at various points in the film. Van Der Beek, the former star of Dawson's Creek, is initially cast as the lead for Ded Drem, and his performance as an actor who has cluelessly bought in to what he believes is the work of a genius is so dead on that you have to wonder how many times the guy has actually watched one of his more vapid peers read too much in to the ramblings of a drunken madman. Dawson is replaced halfway through the shooting of Ded Drem by Anthony Rapp, who is best known for originating the role of Mark Cohen in Broadway's Rent. His entire performance is wonderfully understated, which is exactly what I was looking for after forty minutes of watching the abrasive, over the top Dick. Though I don't know if he has the comedic chops to do any role other than "Anthony Rapp placed in to a bizarre situation," his presence provided the sort of balance that the movie would've desperately lacked otherwise. It's also worth noting that, without him, we wouldn't have one of the film's best lines: "The only good thing about Rent was that they could jump on to a table at a moment's notice."
Maybe that's what Danny Roane needed too keep me from loathing it. More table jumping.
Special Features
Extended Scenes: There are roughly five of these, and each one contains about sixty seconds of additional footage. Putting them together was probably more trouble than it was worth.
Outtakes: It's ten straight minutes of people starting lines and then laughing. I don't get why these gag reels are so popular.
The 411: The concept behind Danny Roane: First Time Director isn't a bad one. In fact, I'll even go as far as saying that the execution is solid for roughly fifty percent of the movie. Yet, for other fifty percent of the movie, Andy Dick has heavy on-camera involvement. Every time he comes on to the screen, he brings the momentum of the picture to a screeching halt, making me forget about whatever witty piece of dialogue or amusing performance I had seen seconds before. Had this movie been shot with anybody else in the title role, it would've had an outside chance of being something that I could recommend. However, as it stands, Danny Roane is something to watch when you're drunk at 3 AM and flipping through basic cable stations, not something that I would ever recommend checking out on DVD. Trust me, save your money.
