Dave Made a Maze

 2017, d. Bill Watterson (not the Calvin and Hobbes guy)

Remember in Community when Troy and Abed made that really cool blanket fort? The titular maze (well, labyrinth, actually) that the titular Dave has built here seems like it could have been something Troy and Abed built, because it's magical. Like a Tardis it's much bigger on the inside (and far more deadly) than you'd expect.

Visually, this film and its cardboard sets are legitimately stunning. I'm quite in awe of how cool it all is. It's a short 80 minute runtime and 70 of it is spent within the cardboard maze. There's just set after set of weird delights, moving parts, strange effects (all practical) that are so viscerally pleasing. The story is another matter.

There's some kind of metaphor at play here but I'm not sure if it's the script, or the production, or the combination, but the intention gets lost. The story muddies fantasy and reality to a confusing extent, such that neither the characters or viewer is all that certain about what's the point is.

The makers of this could have watched the Community episode "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" - an episode where the characters become stop-motion animated yet still have a clear divisible line between fantasy and reality. There isn't such a line here and it sinks the film which could otherwise have been both fun and potent. At first I thought Dave was having some kind of psychotic break from reality that has manifested into a magical world, but that doesn't bear fruit. There's stuff about relationship troubles and feeling inadequate and directionless, but these existential white guy problems aren't handled cleanly and they seem kind of trivial for the scope of the production.

The cast is mostly great, with Meera Rohit Kumbhal turning what could have been then nagging, fed up girlfriend into the ultimate protagonist of the piece. While the conceit of documentary filmmaking is also out of step with the filmed reality, the mostly silent cameraman and sound guy are kind of fun background players and responsible for some of the more enjoyable gags. Nick Thune, as the titular Dave, is the weak link though. I have enjoyed Thune's stand-up for years but he's not the strongest actor and he can't handle the subtle emotion his character needs.

The editing at times is puzzling, why they decide to cut away to certain things and when often doesn't make sense...I can only think it's trying to be funny but it's  more confusing. A lot of the humour falls flat, whether it's the absurdity of adding in "foreign travelers" randomly or specific lines that don't have any comedic punch to them but are timed like laugh lines, it seems like it's trying too hard. The gold is in the labyrinth, the utter absurdity of it that isn't always played out. The death traps are phenomenal, and so PG rated. Even though people are being killed, their blood is yarn or silly string or crepe paper.

This is absolutely worth watching just for the creativity, and nothing is outright offensive about it, it's just a shame this weren't more a mental health allegory, or that we weren't watching the Community gang work their way through another one of Abed's fantasy breaks from reality.