Drowning Mona

The new comedy "Drowning Mona" commits the cardinal sin of not being funny, despite the presence of promising plot elements such as idiots maiming themselves, idiots dying, Yugos, and violent family dysfunctionality. It is not funny because no one involved in making the film, and only one person involved in acting in it, has any idea of how to establish and maintain a humorous tone, or how to manipulate the tone back to humorousness after lapsing into seriousness. Thus, "Drowning Mona" contains a very few good isolated gags but cannot string them together in any effective way, and what seem like promising ideas are let down utterly by their execution. "Drowning Mona"'s script, with the right cast and director, could easily have been another "There's Something About Mary," but the tone-deafness it exhibits means there's nothing much about it at all.

"Drowning Mona" does in fact concern drowning someone named Mona, in a small New York town which has apparently been chosen by Yugo as a staging grounds from which to invade America with its unique automobiles. This places the film sometime in the 80's, and all the characters in this film sport the bad clothing and hairstyles we expect from films documenting this era. So here we already have two potent sources of comic fodder (the 80's and Yugos), both of which are completely lost on the filmmakers, as they manage to wring exactly no funny jokes from them. As they move through the film, the filmmakers somehow manage to avoid the humorous potential of kinky sex based on game shows, a policeman completely obsessed by Broadway musicals, keep-it-all-in-the-family lovin', customized license plates (they are customized, but they aren't funny), and a pair of lovebirds suddenly torn apart by the fact that the man of the pair suspects he murdered someone. Among other things! This waste of comedic fodder, brought about by misplaced emphases, wooden directorial rhythms and a million other little things, will bring chills to the spine of humor connoisseurs everywhere.

Of course, the blame cannot be cast entirely on the director. The actors have a bunch of stuff to apologize for too. Chief among these is Bette Midler as the title murder victim. You would think someone as experienced at acting as Midler is would know the difference between funny cruelty and cruel cruelty, and know which one belongs in a comedy. However, in this film, she doesn't exhibit knowledge of either of these things, and this fact means that Midler's scenes force unexpected shifts of tone on the film, from which the film never really recovers. Danny DeVito phones in his role. Jamie Lee Curtis, a talented comedic actress, has so little to do that she might as well not be in the film, even though what little she does shows her talent nicely. Casey Affleck is simply terrible, not a "nice guy" at all but the sniveling toady the evil characters keep accusing him of being, a character who constantly rejects all attempts by the filmmakers to create sympathy for him by being a wuss of staggering magnitude. The only cast member who shows up, in fact, is Neve Campbell, who delivers a surprisingly nuanced, tonally controlled, and quite funny performance as Affleck's put-upon girlfriend. But when Neve Campbell is the funniest person in a film, what does that say about the film?

We complain when aluminum cans go unrecycled, because throwing them away is a waste of resources. Well, this film wastes comedic resources at a simply staggering rate. If comedy wasn't a renewable resource, we'd all be in trouble. As it is, there is no excuse for taking a script this packed with comedic opportunity and making out of it a movie that delivers a mere half-laugh every other minute. Yet that is what we have here. Let's all hope that the only further drowning this film does is at the box office.

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