Why I Did Not Appreciate Mutual Appreciation

Here we have the story of a struggling musician who moves to NY, hangs out with some friends, kisses a girl he’s not that into, plays a show, and then flirts with his friend’s girlfriend. This is the plot, or lack thereof, of Mutual Appreciation, the new film by indie darling Andy Bujalski. It’s not that I require a complex or sophisticated plot to draw me into a film. Take Nicole Holofcener’s Walking and Talking, for example: also about unmarried twentysomethings doing little more than hanging out and talking in NYC. According to reviewer Matt Bailey, “[Holofcener], a refugee from the male-dominated trenches of film school and indie filmmaking…makes movies about women who are realer than real.” (for full review click here.) W&T is witty and insightful, with well-developed, interesting characters; it is naturalistic without being dull. Mutual Appreciation, on the other hand, is naturalistic in all the wrong ways – it captures the nail-against-chalkboard inanity of daily conversation, the annoying pretentiousness of hipsters attempting to make profound statements about life and relationships. And yet somehow the acting, and much of the conversation, often seemed contrived. Alan, the main character, is a generic composite of every flaky-player-hipster-boy-in-a-band I’ve ever met, but less interesting, and I wasn’t exactly sympathetic with his plight, i.e. blowing off the girl he’s made out with, figuring out how to live the rockstar-lifestyle without an actual band or even a job, trying to co-opt his best friend’s girl. Ellie and Lawrence were much more palatable, even likeable at times, but not enough to even things out.
Am I being too harsh? Perhaps its just that this film hits too close to home. Why sit on the couch and watch on-screen the conversations I could overhear at the nearest Mission dive bar? I already know what its like to attempt to be an “artist,” to balk a the idea of a mundane job, to sit around and drink wine and not know what the hell you’re doing with your life. And if I were to write a screenplay about it, I would hope that I could at least come up with better dialogue.
Or perhaps its the gender thing, and I just can’t relate to Bujalski’s bumbling dickhead of a protagonist. Perhaps I prefer Walking and Talking because the director and the protagonist are female. If Matt Bailey is right, Holofcener’s films don’t appeal to men because their focus is interpersonal relationships. If Walking and Talking is an “indie Gen X chick flick dramedy” and as such, an “unsellable hybrid of film,” what does that say about Mutual Aprreciation? It is certainly about interpersonal relationships, but it is most definitely not a “chick flick.” Is it merely the male perspective that defines this difference? I think in the end it comes down to this: while relationships are the central focus of Walking and Talking, the real core of Mutual Appreciation is the main character’s obsession with himself.