Answers to Nothing | Review

There’s one word that succinctly defines the essence of Matthew Leutwyler’s latest film, Answers to Nothing, a bastardized mutant offspring of Crash (2005): contrived. A celluloid merry-go-round concerning the lives of several Los Angeles residents as they meander throughout their lives, nary a moment exists in the film that doesn’t reek of supreme artificiality and strained connections resulting in a laborious, exhausting exercise in kindness porn, belonging instead to the televised sap on solipsistic network channels than the cutting edge cinema it believes itself to be.

Leutwyler’s film methodically introduces us to his cast of characters and their major defining characteristics and difficult situations. Ryan (Dane Cook) is an unhappily married therapist, bogged down by his successful lawyer wife, Kate (Elizabeth Mitchell), and having an affair with singer Tara (Aja Volkman). Kate suffers from white lady baby malaise, attempting in vitro fertilization, while on the work front she represents a recovering alcoholic, Drew (Miranda Bailey), struggling to wrestle the custody rights from her parents so that she may care for her comatose brother.

Meanwhile, Ryan attempts to deal with his mother (Barbara Hershey), who deludes herself about the truth of her own broken marriage, and a self-loathing patient, Allegra (Kali Hawk), who can’t seem to stop saying she hates black people, which alienates her from a new found love interest Eric (Zach Gilford), a DJ at the club where Tara performs. For good measure, a grade school teacher addicted to virtual reality computer games, a police officer with some blatantly obvious secrets and the lead investigator on the missing girl’s case all converge in hopelessly harebrained scenarios, each turn of the screw hysterically over-churning the batter of one schizophrenic mess of a film. And, as if they haven’t been “connected” enough already, the media firestorm about a missing white girl blasts across every television screen featured in the film.

Answers to Nothing stumbles awkwardly from frame one, attempting to create a darkly humorous situation with Cook relating the love story of his grandparents to a woman as she performs fellatio on him. His wife calls desperately from a fertility clinic where the couple has an appointment, and Cook forces his mistress to spit his sputum infused spunk into a sample cup. A more talented director/screenwriter with a flair for black comedy could have made this an uncomfortable, queasy scenario. Leutwyler is painfully obvious at his attempt to shock his audience, dousing us with dialogue from one character that promulgates she is “sweating like a rapist.”

The rest of the film caterwauls along like a freshly amputated forest animal, schmaltzy and obtuse, juggling characters into a six degrees of separation narrative of ludicrous arrangements. While we’re led to believe that everyone from an affluent television writer to a school teacher in Los Angeles would be emotionally embroiled in the media blitz surrounding one missing girl, each characterization is produced so pathetically and lazily that only a dull, throbbing hatred can be mustered for each of their ordeals.

When Dane Cook’s mistress asks whether he loves his wife, we’re treated to a monologue on how he can recognize what love means intellectually, but emotionally, he’s forgotten what love means. With the use of the intersecting vignettes narrative (that seemingly only serves to bolster running time for this film), one could assert that this filmmaker also forgot what the nature of film means. And when a school teacher attempts to take the law into his own hands concerning the missing school girl, the major theme of Answers to Nothing screeches across the screen with as much finesse as scratching a chalkboard; society doesn’t work unless we all look out for each other. The only missing element is a Blanche Dubois caricature uttering some treatise on the kindness of strangers. While the film foolishly squanders the talents of some accomplished performers (Barbara Hershey, Kali Hawk), as it attempts to tackle themes of infidelity, alcoholism, racism, and even media exaggeration, Answers to Nothing foolishly seems to be under the impression that someone was asking questions of it in the first place. Asking how it snagged a theatrical release doesn’t count.

Rating 1.5 stars