This review has been ‘repurposed’ from my other site, theOneliner.com
Let me ask you a question, as it’s just about the only factor that determines whether or not you are going to glean even the slightest amount of pleasure from this ‘ere film. Are you the sort of person who wouldn’t mind watching some stranger’s grainy, roundly uninteresting holiday videos?
Because, on balance, that’s pretty much all that the The Third Pint reduces itself to. It’s setup runs thus; Some dude called David Maitt (Ramiro Ramos) drinks a pint of beer when out on a date and finds he’s turned invisible. Thrown for something of a loop by this turn of events, he decides to withdraw from normal society and make a study of people, then eventually travel round the world while relating to the audience his unique brand of deeply insightful psychology, for given values of ‘deep’, ‘insight’ and ‘psychology’.
For someone who boasts throughout the film that his unique condition allows him to “see more” of the human condition, it’s surprising how trite and inconsequential his musings turn out to be. The most profound observation he manages to come out with is that sometimes when children fall over they don’t cry. Thanks for that, Sherlock. Similarly deeply unoriginal hippyish codswallop is doled out over the course of the piece, with such startling advice as don’t be slaves to corporate culture, like, man, and don’t run through life when you could walk and like, totally see the beauty in everything, man, groovy, far out. This might have worked through seen through a bongwater filter back in the sixties, but as helpful advice for today’s world it’s encroaching onto chocolate fireguard territory. It’s especially rich coming from someone who can freeload his way through life stealing food and travel because he’s fucking invisible, but I have to work to eat, thanks so very much.
Now, disagreeing with a central characters philosophy does not automatically make it a bad film. What automatically makes it a bad film, at least around these parts, is to be so very, very boring, and lo and behold The Third Pint is very, very boring. Saying nothing of any worth on any philosophical basis, visually having both the barren artistic sense and bland unmemorability of amateur holiday footage seen the world over and a crushingly, gratingly repetitive soundtrack that makes even Philip Glass scores seem bearable, there simply is nothing of any worth on any level in this film. How very film festival.
The Third Pint can do one. Writer / director Luciano Podcaminsky can do one. The annoyingly accented, stilted, unlikable performance from Ramiro Ramos can do one. The only thing that stops it being worse that Crack Willow is that it’s ‘just’ coma-inducingly boring, rather than offensive and coma-inducingly boring. Once again, another selection from this year’s EIFF ‘Under the Radar’ selection that ought to have stayed undetected.