Storytelling (2001)
Directed by Todd Solondz
College and high school serve as the backdrop for two stories about dysfunction and personal turmoil.
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What critics compared Storytelling to
(Solondz would go on to almost directly respond to that worldview with the flawed Storytelling .)
Maybe it didn't help that the following year, Dreamworks released a comedy/drama about not so happy suburbanites of its own, "American Beauty" which, like a lighter, more mainstream "Happiness" knockoff, went on to gather near unanimous praise and win a bunch of Oscars.
Director Sam Mendes ("American Beauty") said he found "Happiness" condescending to its characters, and Solondz took enough umbrage at the remark to make a cinematic retort that merely goes further in its foul contempt for human interaction than "Happiness" did.
The resulting film, ‘American Scooby’, includes sly references to both American Beauty (there’s a shot of a plastic bag floating in the wind) and the acclaimed documentary American Movie (whose Mike Schank also has a bit part as Giamatta’s cameraman).
(Solondz's "cleverest" moves here are attempts at "self-censorship," including a big red block that obscures an on-screen sex scene, and a past-its-prime send-up of "American Beauty."
Solondz also takes a poke at the swirling-paper mysticism of that other, smugly superior critique of suburbia, American Beauty.
I'll take this over the banal condescension of Solodz's oddly similar and defensive Storytelling any day of the week.