The Clutterbucks - Review

One of the main things I like to do when approaching a film is to have an open mind. I have been burned by expectations too many times to know what I am going to feel after a film. When I saw the poster and trailer for The Clutterbucks, I was unsure, it didn’t seem like it was going to hit for me, but I knew that if I went in with an open mind, I might just be surprised. I was not. The Clutterbucks is not a film for me. I was largely unamused by the humour, uninterested in the story and unimpressed by the use of AI in its creation. The redeeming qualities come in the form of the actors, particularly Laura Vale as Twyla Clutterbuck and Brian Gross as Rufus Clutterbuck. They both seem to understand the film they’re in the most, and got the most out of the dialogue for me.

It’s America in 2075, where blue (liberal) states have become Cobalt, and red (conservative) states have turned Scarlet. The political divide seems to hinge mostly on the use of technology in everyday life, with the Cobalt crowd enjoying lab grown and genetically modified food, while the Scarlet crew shun tech use, with their use being compared to that of the 1980s. However, Twyla does smoke a luminous purple vape and the family have a large flat-screen TV with accompanying soundbar. Twyla isn’t looking forward to the kids coming home for Thanksgiving, where she knows their political opinions will get in the way of them bonding like she does with her youngest daughter, who is a ventriloquist. She has a little stuffed toy named Mr. Fuzzywinkle on her arm for the entire film, mouthing along to the crude dialogue from Kyle Dunnigan.

Billy (Brit Scott) brings his new girlfriend, Christina (Jacy King) from the Cobalt side. Madison (Kayla Raelle) brings along news that she is attending AA. Billy’s news is even more Earth shattering to his parents. The runtime is stretched out by him telling each one of them individually, to an equal response. Christina is pregnant, and his aspirations of an NFL professional career are over, while he focuses on his new weed shop. Not the news that either parent wants to hear, as they are running low on money, and looking for Billy’s new career to be able to pull them from their financial struggles. Right as tensions reach a boiling point, an emergency news broadcast tells the family that a new lockdown has been ordered to stop the spread of the highly contagious “Pizzlewang Virus”. With this new forced confinement, can Twyla bring control back to her family, or will her attempts only push them further away?

I can see the allegory here, drawing both sides of the American political landscape as broad as possible to pit them against one another in this small family's dynamic, I just don't think it does anything in an interesting enough sense to justify the setting. The film sets itself in 2075, after we have gone through a lot more conflict, leading to strict borders between opinions, the most extreme version of what we have going on now, but not enough has changed or evolved to make them extreme in the everyday. The film is set in the Scarlet side, which works for the film's low budget, allowing the technology to be a background element of the world. This is where a lot of the AI generated B-roll shots are inserted. They have one person credited with VFX so I’m not sure if it was their role to source the clips from AI, or composite the couple of VFX elements that seem not to be AI. I don’t disagree with AI wholeheartedly, but when it is in place of creativity, I think it is lazy and disappointing. I would love to be proven wrong and have the team behind this show their visual effects process but from the look, it is hard not to assume it has been generated.

The broad brush goes beyond the world building, into the characters themselves, with all of them feeling like a caricature of an element of a political standpoint. They have very little beyond their opinions that make you want to connect with them as characters, and this makes the film hard to fully engage with. The comedy helps at times, which shines through in moments of bizarre character decisions. I found the physical comedy more enjoyable than anything else for the most part, where they used some good recurring jokes to sell moments of conflict.

I enjoyed the attention paid to the music in the film. They have a great soundtrack that fits the theme of the film well, and even when there are lyrics, they mix it well with the dialogue not to overpower the conversations happening on screen. Along with the music, I think there are some standout close-up camera shots that felt effective in some conflict scenes. This style isn’t consistent throughout the film, but other shot choices work to tell the story. The use of sound effects in the film are also inconsistent, with some being used really effectively for comedic effect, while others in flashbacks felt like they were just plonked onto the timeline in the edit and left as is. The flashbacks had their own style to them, a harsh vignette that looked like a sniper scope. I didn’t really understand their inclusion but it was nice to have a differentiation. This was pretty consistent, other than the one AI generated sequence of “what ifs”.

I am disappointed that The Clutterbucks wasn’t for me, the poster and political allegory storyline is one I would usually gravitate towards, but this one just didn’t click with me at all. I appreciate the sentiment of the story and the journey the crew went on to complete the film, saying that they were shooting this right as the Palisades fires were raging through California. A cinematic effort that I wish was extended through to the entirety of the film.

The Clutterbucks is available for VOD on Good Rebel Picture's website