Like Luigi Pirandello rewriting Steven Speilberg’s DUEL/’71, his tv pic about a driverless, homicidal truck. That’s the thinking behind Quentin Dupieux’s Dada-esque What-If (more a What-Is-It?) about an abandoned, malevolent tire that picks itself up, dusts itself off, and starts running all over anything in its way. And when that’s not enough, vibrates to a telekinesis ejaculation of death vibes to blow up obstacles & perceived enemies. Framed as a spectator event, the absurd doings are apparently being staged by a cast of fake cops who may not know they are merely actors in roles . . . or are they? Purposefully hard to tell; and purposefully pretty good fun in its violent low-rent/low-tech manner. Modest F/X tire tricks & exploding heads good for a few shock laughs peppered along the way, even as the joke begins to wear thin. Dupieux a bit too proud of his quirky pretensions which might well be an inadvertent takedown of the Western ‘cool’ pretensions of cult director Monte Hellman.* As a two-reel short, this might have been a classic. But who makes two-reel shorts these days?
DOUBLE-BILL: *Hellman’s THE SHOOTING/’66 probably the one in mind. (View At Your Own Risk)
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