Tape (2001)

Tape begins with a seedy motel room. It ends in a seedy motel room -- in Lansing Michigan no less; home of the World's Largest Lugnut. It goes nowhere in between. To be more brutally honest I must say this abomination, this pile of steaming excrement, just sat on my wall screen and stunk up the room. It is so awful that words can barely describe its true awfulness.Two beta males, no, make that epsilon minus males -- have a completely boring conversation in which the more effeminate (therefore successful) asks prying questions about his pal's sex life. It's something that has bugged me since high school leading to questions like, "are you tapping that?" This pathetic bitchiness gets worse until Uma Thurman brightens the scenery. Then the dialogue gets much more abominable. She manipulates these pathetic excuses for men mervilessly.Quite frankly, I came away from this whole ordeal hoping the worst for all three of these jerks. The four minutes it took for the cops to show up lasted for an eternity, but disappointed nevertheless. I hate this film.

This film is not bad because it's just a conversation or because it's done with cheap camera equipment. And as such or because of it, it isn't boring. Actually, these are the only positive things about this film and they might even stimulate more people to make films like this, technically.Now, for what is bad and abominable: Vince, a loser in American society, comes together with two friends from college. Actually, the meeting is something that Vince seems to have been planning for ages because it's five to ten years since he seen any of his old friends. From this we can gather that there is a big trauma for him involving his two friends. As it turns out, Vince dated Amy but she wouldn't pull out and Vince broke off the relationship. His reason was obviously not because Amy was saving it for after marriage and therefore instead thought that he was unloved by Amy and so broke off a relationship that probably only served to strengthen Amy's self-esteem and nothing else. This seemed to be especially obvious, since Amy later got together with Jon, the other friend, and had sex with him. Vince did however suspect coercion from Jon's side for being able to sleep with Amy. How old that suspicion is, we do not know but we can suspect that Amy's rejection has hurt Vince deeply and now he wants to know for sure what happened.It is true, that we never clearly know why Amy did not want to have sex but just as she later claims that what Jon did was not rape (although we know that he has admitted it on tape), we can assume that she did not tell Vince that she was saving it for marriage, which he might have respected. We do not even know that Vince knew that she was a virgin and maybe she wasn't! As it all turns out and the reason for why this film is fascistic is that Vince, a loser in society, started out his voyage in life by being exploited by both Amy and Jon, without understanding it fully but vaguely suspecting it. In the end of the film, he is left after being fooled to waste all his capital in form of drugs and both Amy and Jon are comparably triumphant. To top this, Vince are supposed to feel sorry for breaking off with Amy, who just used him and obviously felt nothing for him, not then and not now, since she fools him into losing a lot of money, when it is obvious that he does not have so much of that stuff.Bottom line: Two winners in society triumphs over a poor loser - just as it should be in any fascistic state.

In its sort this is simply a good movie. Still not really my cup of tea though, I'll admit.This movie is like a filmed stage-play. It's set at only one location and the entire movie only features 3 characters in it. This of course means that the movie gets entirely driven by its characters and dialog. It's a small and independent movie, that nevertheless still had some big name actors involved with it.Movies like this, that are basically just filmed stage-plays, don't work out much normally. It's not really hard to see why. The movies are slow and they tend to drag with its overlong dialog. Besides there are very little things you can do, movie technically-wise, with a story that is set at only one location. You can tell that the director tried to make the movie more dynamic and lively by putting in some unusual camera-work that however to me only worked out annoying and distracting, as often would be the case with an independent movie that's all too aware of itself.This movie also does really start offs slow and also sort of uninteresting. At first it seems nice how these characters are talking and interacting with each other, which seems realistic at all but it also gets tiresome pretty fast, also since the dialog is basically going nowhere. I don't think I have ever heard the word 'why?' uttered so much in a movie. Nevertheless, once the movie gets over its slow point and the whole point of the movie its story starts to become more obvious, the movie itself becomes a far more interesting and also really better one to watch. The story does not disappoint, even though it of course is all being kept very small and simple. It's simply an effective movie at what it tries to be- and to achieve with it.A good movie within its sort.7/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

After having watched it last night on cable, I have a few issues with Tape.-I couldn't suspend disbelief. I would've kicked his butt and fled the room with the tape instead of going on and on and on in verbal circles with the screwball.-The casting of Leonard was awful because he's a dead ringer for Jim Carey. This became more distracting as the film became darker. I might've forgotten it but one of Leonard's eyes tend to drift in different directions, thus heightening the expectation of comedy.-Uma doesn't appear until the last 45 minutes of the film. If I found her more likable it was because I saw less of her than the other two.-There isn't an ounce of dark humor in the film. No relief for the audience from the, um, tedium.-I felt like I was trapped in a room with Spaulding Gray and his evil twin. Incessant yapping.