Self Reliance: Creating the Great Slacker Average Comedy-Thriller

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Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes:

When a middle-aged man (Jake Johnson) is invited into a limo by famous actor Andy Samberg, his dull life takes a thrilling turn. Johnson is offered a chance to win a million dollars in a dark web reality TV show, where assassins from all over the world attempt to kill him for 30 days. The catch? He can’t be killed if he’s not entirely alone, leading him to recruit an unlikely team to help him survive.

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Review:

Self Reliance is a slacker comedy thriller written, directed and starting the comedian Jake Johnson. Most of it is gleefully adolescent— cheerfully recycling genre parodies with an innocent charm every 20 minutes. Add a cute Anna Kendrick as a participant to the game and Self Reliance becomes a faux romantic comedy. Add a bum, as a necessary accomplice and it turns into a weird buddy film. Add a disbelieving family and it becomes a teen rebellion romp. Add ninja mimes and it becomes an existential martial arts movie that’s all costumes and avoids chops and kicks. Its essential theme is that it wants to be one thing but never is. It tries thing on but never adopts. Self Reliance stays true to its slacker vision.

Jake Johnson with a beard looks like a dumbed down Stanley Kubrick. It’s a pretense that gets a lot of ribbing, because this dude is the anti-Kubrick- not exactly artsy, but not exactly fartsy. Johnson style is see it, show it, but don’t analyze it. There are no Easter eggs in his backgrounds. Everything is up there and the parodies are of the obvious kind. Self Reliance just wants to be an average movie. Like Johnson’s slacker character, he’s happy with that.

You know what, I’m totally fine with that. Self Reliance gets a 3. 0/5 or a B+. It’s streaming on Hulu.

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Credits:

Directed by

Jake Johnson

Written by

Jake Johnson

Produced by

• Jake Johnson
• Ali Bell
• Joe Hardesty

Starring

• Jake Johnson
  • Anna Kendrick
  • Natalie Morales
  • Andy Samberg
  • Mary Holland
  • Emily Hampshire
  • Christopher Lloyd

Cinematography

Adam Silver

Edited by

Ryan Brown

Music by

Dan Romer

Production

companies

• MRC
  • Clown Show
  • Lonely Island
  • Walcott Productions

Distributed by

• Hulu
• Neon
• Paramount Global Content Distribution

Release dates

• March 11, 2023(SXSW)
• January 3, 2024(United States)

Running time

90 minutes

Country

United States

Language

English

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