LolliLove

A yuppie couple want to give something back to the community. They have a scheme which involves giving out special lollipops to the homeless. They believe that the homeless could learn self-worth via lollies wrapped in special wrappers covered in inspirational slogans and drawings.

This low budget mockumentary is quite surprisingly a product of the Troma studio. I say unexpected as their brand of comedy could best be described as 'wilfully stupid', whereas this film contains a comedy of a far subtler variety. The two stars are Jenna Fischer and James Gunn, who also wrote the thing. It's a very good bit of work from them as they both put it great comic performances as the narcissistic couple who are so self-obsessed they never realise just how ridiculous their foolish scheme is. The writing too is pretty good with a lot of black comedy and satire. But the most impressive thing for me was that I found myself actually laughing aloud a few times which is more than happens with most comedies. Not a bad effort at all.

2004, Year of Shrek 2, Spider-Man 2, The Incredibles, Sideways, Harry Potter 3 or whatever, but I never heard of this. LolliLove sounded a little odd at first, not gonna lie. When I saw it was a satire and it starred Jenna Fischer and James Gunn, two of some of my favorite filmmakers, I was sold.

Now, Amazon Prime is doing 7 day trials, and this movie was on there. It's on Vudu and Tubi for free as of 4/20/2020, so anyone with internet has no excuse to not go check it out, Right now, Stop reading this review, Just watch it.

So, I decided to check it out, It was 6:45 AM, I needed to get to sleep so I could get back to writing when I woke up. It was only 64 mins, so I decided to check it out.

From the beginning, There's narration from someone who I'm willing to bet was just a friend of the Gunns (at the time at least, considering now Fischer and Gunn are divorced) and after he helped write Jenna write it, he said "I WANT TO BE THE NARRATOR!" Jenna and James probably looked at him like he was nuts, but they needed a narrator, so there we go. We got whoever Peter Alton is. The narration isn't bad, although I still think it'd possibly be better without it. HOWEVER, Due to this being a satire, I can understand why so I can't be too angry at it considering I probably would've wrote narration for a satirical documentary if I was the writer.

We immediately, after some amazing shots of California, get straight into the Gunns talking about their marriage (they're divorced). They do share chemistry for sure, They work as a couple in the film about as well you'd expect from a real-life couple, What I'm saying is, They work. Gunn and Fischer are both extremely likable, despite how many lines of Gunn's tend to be offensive (I was not offended because honestly who cares) and Fischer's lines tend to sound somewhat selfish. However, Their acting is so excellent that we can't help but like them.

Immediately, Once they begin the charity work, The hilarity begins. Fischer begins calling probably every single company in California (although I'm going to guess the calls were staged). It's hilarious to see this woman scream curse words at random Company peeps and Gunn seeming to fail at almost everything he attempts to do. Gunn becomes obsessed with the drawings. He urinates on paper, He screams at the paper, It's awesome to see Gunn play this ridiculous version of himself.

Eventually, After Fischer continues to be hilarious and Gunn feel like a crazy slasher killer about his drawings, Someone named Larry Fitzgibbon, a company person, gives them a chance. They begin their presentation, and this is where a subplot about their marriage comes in. After the presentation, Larry seems as if he's going to give them the money-- BEFORE he wants to see the lollipops.

This is where that marriage plot begins to kick in, Gunn blames Fischer for the lack of lollipops and then they improvise something. However, Gunn takes all the credit, and as they leave, They speak to a woman who wants to volunteer. Gunn then calls her beautiful (THE woman who wants to Volunteer, by the way), which causes Fischer to give her infamous death stare for anyone familar with her filmography/her role in The Office (US). Then once they're about to get in their car, They break. Fischer goes nuts and screams curse words once more (and it's still funny and awesome to see this actress going nuts to her husband who's playing a self-obsessed/selfish character). Her husband in this film is portrayed as kinda your average self-obsessed character, He even plays GTA instead of helping her with the lollipop artwork!

There's also a lot of cameos by actors and actresses like Judy Greer (who per usual feels like she's bored out of her mind), Jason Segel, and Linda Cardellini, who were dating according to the narrator. There's a funny scene involving Fischer, Gunn, Segel, and Cardellini where the Gunns ask for over 250,000$ for this "LolliLove" charity, in which Segel and Cardellini deliver surprisingly good performances for the cameo roles they have. They pretty much shut the Gunns down as soon as they ask for it.

This kinda begins the characters' downward slope, but I've already explained what went down from there.

Overall, I won't get in to what happens after all the events I mentioned because that is where this film gets better (although it was excellent to begin with) and even somewhat shocking (Lloyd Kaufman has a freaking cameo man!). Overall, Just see it, It's an excellent satire that makes you curious about what would happen next? Due to Fischer and Gunn's divorce, I'd love to see a sequel with Jenna Fischer and Lee Kirk, her now-husband, trying something bigger and better, They have two kids, so maybe that could make a sequel much more interesting! Oh well, It'll probably never happen unless an actual studio asked her to make it, but oh well.

We can at least hope for it to one day happen.

One day.

One day.

This movie is mockumentary at its finest - never so outlandish that it's implausible, yet significantly funnier and wittier than what happens in day to day life.

The movie as a whole centers around the trials and tribulations of a would-be Hollywood power couple as they struggle to start a nonprofit organization to help the homeless, with only their naivety, narcissism, and good intentions to guide them. Jenna, the self-proclaimed "Martha Stewart" of fund raising, and her obsessive-compulsive egomaniac "artist" husband James are looking to help the homeless thru "inspirational" art wrapped around lollipops but just can't seem to get the idea off of the ground, whether it be a lack of support from others or an internal tiff or two in their marriage. Absolute hilarity ensues as they work to conquer both. It's not that they don't know that there are problems in the world - it's that, being of well means, they have no idea how to approach the problems at hand. They always innocently see the world through the eyes of the well privileged and are left wondering why nothing seems to go right.

Their naivety is, more than hilarious, touching. As narcissistic as their idea of inspiring the homeless is, you want very much for them to succeed, because in a less-than-perfect world where nobody helps the homeless at all, you at the very least appreciate the seemingly sincere (though misguided) efforts of these two, and you want not to ruin the dreams of those so innocent.

The movie on a whole is a bit rough around the edges - many parts were improvised, and this shows through on a few of the more inconsistent scenes. It sometimes helps scenes to come across as more natural, but more often than not it feels like somebody forgot a line and was trying to cover up. Still, on a whole, this movie is hilarious, touching, and very much worth your time should you come upon it at your local video rental store.

This film really makes one appreciate just how brilliant Christpher Guest's mockumentaries are. It also makes one realize that a TV show like The Office is much harder to make than it might appear.

All that naturalistic mockumentary acting looks so easy, but if this film, Lollilove, proves anything it is that mockumentaries can be very hard to make.

There aren't any glaring mistakes in the film's production, but rather none of the elements of the film are done to the level that needs to be done to make these films work. The acting is just a tad overdone, the writing is slightly implausible, and the camera-work is amateur. All those small mistakes add up to bring the entire thing down to the level of mediocrity.

To be fair, the film seems like more of a casual side project than an attempt at film-making history. It seems that the actors obviously knew the film was kind of a lark and not something that should be taken very seriously. In fact, low budget films like this almost never get put out on DVD, so it is pretty interesting from that standpoint.

Even if you are a die hard fan of the genre, though, I would say that you could miss this film without any regret at all.

As a fan of the good people at Troma's work and ideals, it was on visiting the Troma site that I stumbled on this gem; a mockumentary about helping the homeless by giving them lollies, Lollilove is a sharp satire about helping those less fortunate and a strong debut from Jenna Fischer, but not without flaws.

The characters are well written, and the cast are believable and funny. Even Lloyd Kaufman, in one of his stronger role, as Father Lloyd. James Gunn gets most of the laughs as the ridiculous artist husband, making a number of very un-pc statements - his character is improved for it. The editing, though, is the films trump card, making the film hold together better than most mockumentaries (and a lot of the Troma back catalogue for that matter), looking a lot more professional than its meagre budget justifies. Though Lollilove isn't your average Troma picture and probably won't please all Troma fans, this does share the Troma independent spirit and the dark macabre humour.

That said, there are flaws, the major one being its length; a 65 minute running time, which for a feature film is not long enough to be truly satisfying, at least to this cinephile; yes, the deleted scenes on the DVD would have harmed the film had they been included, but Lollilove would have benefited an extra day or twos shooting, and 10 minutes more the running length. One clumsy directorial choice was the bleeping of swearing, intended to make Lollilove more like a TV show, but seems out of place given the dark nature of humour. Also, a couple of points in the film the joke ratio isn't as strong as it could be, especially when compared to the work of Christopher Guest (a tough comparison point, being that he's an auteur of this genre).

Though not perfect, Lollilove is a wicked satire, a promising debut, and a good Troma title to boot. Perhaps to fully appreciate this film, it is necessary to note the low budget production values, and the work done between husband and wife Jenna and James Gunn. This is worth further investigation if your a fan of mockumentaries, and have a dark sense of humour.