{"id":32653,"date":"2020-02-03T10:17:04","date_gmt":"2020-02-03T15:17:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=32653"},"modified":"2020-02-03T10:17:04","modified_gmt":"2020-02-03T15:17:04","slug":"appiness-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2020\/02\/03\/appiness-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Appiness (2020)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Two high school friends reconnect after one loses his job and get together to create the best, coolest, most trending new app to help shy people connect. Along the way, they learn a lot about themselves, each other, and life.<\/p>\n

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Written and directed by Eli Batalion, Appiness is a comedy that is rooted in something a lot of millennials (and others) will connect with, that need to find what it is you really want to do in life while trying to survive and make a living. It\u2019s an apt film for the current state of young adult life, showing that some are forced to go back to their parents and some just don\u2019t know what to do with themselves anymore. Here there are also a lot of other easily identifiable current trends and obvious things in here from the app building to the Ted Talk-like things, the social media, the programmers Olympics to the quirky fashion, the nerdy talk, the introverts being pushed around. It\u2019s a lot of clich\u00e9s and it does some good with them and goes in some of the obvious directions with others. The stories crams as many bits and pieces of what it\u2019s like to live within a phone and social media obsessed world. It works for most of the film, but the story does feel a bit thin and predictable at times, something that\u2019s too bad considering the feel of the film as a whole works pretty well for it. The moods established are fitting to the different parts of the film, even the in-your-face ones. The film has a story that works overall, but doesn\u2019t feel particularly original.<\/p>\n

The cast here is decent in how they each handle their parts, none are grating, but none really come up on top of the pile. It feels a bit middle of the road while being entirely ok. There\u2019s plenty talent here but it all feels like it\u2019s just there, like everyone is playing some kind of hipster as they expect them to be. They all work well together, but it feels like something is missing, with most of them looking like they are doing some version of people, people that don\u2019t feel 100% real. Which is too bad considering they all seem to have talent, it\u2019s just not feeling like it\u2019s all directed in the right way maybe. Or perhaps, it\u2019s the type of characters they had, all feeling like that one co-worker you don\u2019t really like, that college buddy you\u2019re glad is gone, or that barista with the sense of humor that doesn\u2019t quite click. The look of the film works with the story and feel of things, it adds to the quirkiness and the oddity of the story. It kind of works for it and kind of just adds to the things that may work against it for some.<\/p>\n

Appiness is a film that will either work or not at all for each viewer with everything feeling a bit extra quirky, a bit extra hipster. The comedy works at times and some of the characters are just a bit less like the others, which helps the film move along. Something about it just didn\u2019t work for this viewer while still not being bored or too annoyed, it was not super engaging or entertaining.<\/p>\n