Mooney: star and screenwriter.
James lives in a bunker beneath a post-apocalyptic landscape. If he goes outside, the toxic air will give him “skincer.” His only companionship beyond his oddly formal parents is the TV show Brigsby Bear, a low-budget sci-fi children’s show.
And then the show is cancelled.
James is stuck in limbo, never knowing if Brigsby defeats the evil trying to destroy his world. He also realizes that he might be the only person who has even seen this show. He resolves to leave home to finish the saga himself.
So begins the refreshingly original coming-of-age comedy Brigsby Bear, directed by Wisconsin native Dave McCary and starring Saturday Night Live’s Kyle Mooney (who also wrote the script). Brigsby Bear is a fantasy for anyone whose favorite show was cancelled mid-cliffhanger. Television interruptus haunts fans because humans demand closure. Mooney and McCary place James in such an exaggerated predicament that his monomaniacal drive is the only sane choice: James must finish the show so he can return to reality.
Mooney and McCary were childhood friends in California, before McCary moved to Monroe, Wisconsin. Years later, they reunited and began making short videos together during the early days of YouTube. In 2013, they made the move to SNL, where Mooney became a cast member and McCary became a segment director.
Their short films are based on a comedy of sloppiness: clunky camera work, poorly timed editing, stammering performances. As McCary explained at a recent post-screening discussion at AMC Dine-In Madison 6: “We wanted to demonstrate in the movie our ability of impersonating shitty-looking television.”
McCary uses the show-within-the-movie approach to demonstrate this well-orchestrated sloppiness, but also proves himself a fine craftsman at realistically capturing the strangeness of James’ life, both during and after the bunker. His harmonious artistic relationship with Mooney allows the film to transition smoothly from funny to tense to dramatic, best exemplified in the film’s most touching scene when James finally tracks down the actress from the show, the only girl he has even known.
That scene also shows how well-honed Mooney’s socially unadjusted shtick is. He’s been playing characters like this for years. And unlike filmdom’s other men-children from Laurel and Hardy onward, James’ childish naïveté is grounded in reality: He is an awkward doofus because he grew up in a bunker. Mooney brings unexpected depth to what could have been a one-note performance.
Things do begin to teeter toward the end as the film rushes through a couple of major sequences, making the last act feel incomplete, but the movie brings such unexpected pleasure that this mad dash to the end is forgivable.
There are lots of surprises in Brigsby Bear, but with this enchanting film, the less known going in, the better.
