This seems like a good idea. Mr. Oizo (seriously, the guy with the sock puppet music video from like 1997) writes and directs a movie about two maladjusted nitwits in a wacky future, casting a comedy duo who have been in at least three movies together. A good idea, but an especially underwhelming movie. I mean, I’ve seen some underwhelming movies lately, like The GoodTimesKid, but at least that one featured the wacky kitchen dance scene as something memorable to hold onto. I watched Steak last night and it’s already starting to fade. And the trouble is I don’t think that was intentional, to make a lightweight wispy mumblecore film. It’s mostly set seven years in the future, but even its futuristic society details seem stolen from other movies. For instance, plastic surgery has run rampant (Brazil) and schoolkids form exclusive, violent clubs and drink only milk (A Clockwork Orange).

It’s not totally clear how much has changed in the future, since we mainly see one town’s high school, and still more specifically, a five-man gang called Chivers (urban dictionary: “group of people dedicated to alleviating the stress of an otherwise hectic day with daily afternoon randomness”). When Blaise gets out of psychiatric hospital for shooting up some bullies (a crime actually committed by his friend George), George wants nothing to do with him, finally beginning to fit in with the super-cool Chivers. Blaise adjusts to the new social life faster than his now-ex-friend and gets himself into Chivers just as George is kicked out for smoking (a no-no in the future). Then they kill a fellow gang member by sorta-accident and run off together. The whole thing is played for absurd comedy – few laughs, just a low-key sense of weirdness. Pleasant Oizo music runs throughout, naturally. Only technical detail I noticed was the camera’s very shallow depth of field – always some part of the shot that isn’t in focus. A nice enough waste of time, but doesn’t get me too anxious to see Oizo’s new killer-tire movie Rubber.