Fired! (2007)

Fired! (2007)** (out of 4)After being fired from a play by Woody Allen, actress Annabelle Gurwitch turned the experience into a stage play as well as this documentary that takes a look at what it's like to be fired. Gurwitch tells her story and we get appearances from other famous people who share their stories of being let go from their jobs. Some of these people include Tim Allen, Andy Dick (shock), Illeana Douglas, Sarah Silverman, Fred Willard, Andy Borowitz, Fisher Stevens, Jeffrey Ross and Richard kind. I think there might have been a good idea somewhere in the story but sadly FIRED! isn't nearly as funny or charming as it thinks it is. I think there are several problems with the biggest one being that the film bounces back and forth between silly, over-the-top comedy and then it tries to take some sort of serious look at being fired. At just 72-minutes the film seems to go on even longer because we get some pretty boring and silly scenes like when Gurwitch is talking to her Rabbi about being fired by Woody Allen and we get another bit where she talks to a grief councilor. Towards the end of the film we start to get more dramatic tellings including the issues in Detroit where thousands of people have lost their jobs to save companies money yet the companies give their CEOs raises. The entire film just feels very uneven and the mix and comedy and drama doesn't work. Plus, it doesn't help that the majority of the time the comedy doesn't work. We basically get celebrities talking about what they did to get fired and while watching most of them I kept asking myself why I should care. Even the main story, Gurwitch getting fired, seems to be a forced issue because if it wasn't Woody Allen who fired her then she really wouldn't have a story or a message. It's because she got fired by a famous person that allowed her to make this. It's too bad she couldn't have interviewed Allen.

Annabelle Gurwitch is a character actress/comedienne who is not quite a household name (unless that household has watched TBS' "Dinner & A Movie" for the last decade), but has still crafted herself a more successful career than most in her field. Her name may not be well known, but the average movie goer or TV watcher probably see her and think, "Oh yeah, she was in 'The Cable Guy'!" or "Wasn't she in that Marisa Tomei episode of 'Seinfeld'?". Needless to say, she has made a career playing supporting roles, but has not yet to my knowledge taken on a lead role, or even made her own documentary.For starters, she does pretty well with "Fired", a documentary that begins with her being fired from a Woody Allen play and expands itself from there. Gurwitch starts out by saying that being hired for a Woody Allen production is every actor's dream (which it probably is). The scene that comes next is of course inevitable given the title of the documentary, but still painful to hear. Naturally, Allen didn't make a cameo in this scene, but the Woody Allen stand in, the voice-over sound-alike, and Gurwitch's realistic reactions to Allen's supposed words were powerful elements to start this documentary off right.From there, Gurwitch interviews a number of celebrities and asks them about the times they were fired, and so goes the rest of the film. Some of the insights are very funny, others are reassuring, and then there are some which fall a bit flat. I thought Gurwitch picked some great people to interview, such as Jeff Garlin and Tim Allen. The shots of Paul F. Tompkins and Illeanna Douglass performing live on stage were also good add-ins, and they were very funny.With these commentaries, though, came the shifting of focus as to what this documentary was actually about. The documentary's subject was about the pain of being fired. Given how Gurwitch claimed to have been fired (i.e. because Woody Allen didn't think she was a good enough actress, not because of what she did), one would think the film would focus around how people were let go of their jobs despite their best efforts. However, as the film went on, you could see that some of the people being interviewed talked about how they got themselves fired intentionally from jobs they hated. That case was especially true for Andy Dick.I've said it before, and I'll say it again: there should be a rule in film-making textbooks that if you put Andy Dick in a movie, there is a high probability it will suck. Andy Dick is not a good comedian, and is famous more for his outrageous (and often times off-putting) antics, drug use, sketchy behavior, and overall arrogance. Any employers who fired him were probably as annoyed by him as the members of SNL who blame him for Phil Hartman's death (as he allegedly supplied Hartman's wife with the supply of heroin that would ultimately be her last). His presence alone contributes nothing to this documentary.Furthermore, the documentary loses itself to the subject of factory workers and others being laid off, and echos more of Michael Moore than Gurwitch probably intended to do. However, watching this after the recent stock market crash that led the U.S. into a recession, there is some really eerie truth that comes from the interviewed economists (including Ben Stein) which members of the Bush White House probably should have listened to before.Above all, though, the documentary was pretty good. If there's anything to take away from it moral-wise, it's that being fired from anything is not the end of the world. Of course, any career service office could tell you that, but it's good to hear from moderately successful entertainers too. I just wish the movie would have ended with how Gurwitch herself moved on from such a career speedbump, and what kinds of projects she has coming up. It also would have been good to hear more about what she had accomplished before the Woody Allen incident for many moviegoers who don't know.I recommend this movie for its entertainment value and for bringing up a subject more than a few people have experienced (myself included). I find myself torn between giving this film 6 or 7 stars, but I will give it seven stars since I enjoyed watching it.

This movie is a documentary about how rough it can be to be fired. The movie has a woman going around the country interviewing people who were fired. This goes on for way to long and gets to be very uninteresting after a while. The idea that being fired can be traumatic is not very shocking. Another gripe is there were a few unfunny stand-up comedy acts to make this movie even worse.I found this movie to be long, tedious, and didn't really make any huge points I haven't already heard. Plus the main character wasn't very good. (Makes you wonder why Woody fired her)

This can declare it's a movie as much as it wants to and that doesn't change anything. This is nothing more than a special to air between movies on the Sundance channel. If that's true, it's more than an hour too long.As for what this is about: The lead gets fired from a Woody Allen play and needs the support of her friends support to move on. That's understandable but it's also a great setup for a bad sitcom. However, those friends are minor celebrities which might be somewhat interesting but it just ends up being annoying. All of the friends (as well as the lead) are trying to play the "pay attention to me" game. To make matters even worse, they're just complaining about their first jobs in such a way that you might think they don't know a lower class exists.