The Machine

Grade: D

My favorite part of Bert Kreischer’s stand-up act is when he laughs at his own jokes. I love seeing him get very tickled by his own punchline. His face turns red, and his usual infectious ear-to-ear grin emerges. He’s quite an enjoyable comedian otherwise, but that is the best part. He is infamous for not wearing a shirt on stage, when most men with his physique would likely never want to be seen in public without one. His greatest hit, so to speak, is the story of when he got involved with the Russian mafia at age 22. Nowadays, he doesn’t even have to get into the bit. All he has to do is the set-up line, and it gets a huge ovation. It’s his Hotel California or Born to Run.

This oft-told anecdote has been dramatized for the cinema in his new movie The Machine. It’s even worse than About My Father, which also took a perfectly talented comedian, and shoehorned him into a movie where he starred as himself, with dismal results. Another similarity is that both films feature respected old veterans as the male lead’s father. In About My Father, it was Robert De Niro. In The Machine, Mark Hamill does the honors as Kreischer’s dad. Though mainly known for being Luke Skywalker, I was struck by how fine an actor he can be, and how much he now resembles my childhood therapist that I saw off-and-on from 1994-2002. If they, for some reason, ever make a biopic about him, and Hamill can do the Texas accent – give him the role.

The jokes here really should have stayed on the comedy stage. It’s painfully easy to detect when a scene with dialogue began its life as a “routine.” When old stand-up material isn’t forcefully recycled, The Machine gives us a busy action plot, with some of the most unrealistic fights and violence that I have ever seen. Characters who should be dead – or at the very least, have a little bit of a limp – are looking and moving like a million bucks in no time. One of my “favorite” tropes (the Fallacy of the Talking Killer) shows up here, in one of its more shameless appearances.

Callbacks to lines from earlier scenes are spoken by characters who would never have been privy to when they were first said. Kreischer is neither an action star nor – especially – a dramatic actor. When he cries in the movie, it’s almost as laughable as when he’s amused by his own joke. Russian characters frequently talk to each other in English. That’s helpful for us, right? I want to forget about The Machine and go watch a Bert Kreischer special. I took an intermission halfway through the film. I went outside and watched the thunderstorm for about 10 minutes. It was more interesting.

Grade: D