Visioneers

Visioneers (Director: Jared Drake): George Washington Winstonhammerman (Zach Galafianakis) works as a Level Three Tunt for the Jeffers Corporation, “the largest and friend­liest and most prof­it­able cor­por­a­tion in the his­tory of man­kind.” But he and his coworkers are miser­able, mostly due to the company’s philo­sophy of des­troying every trace of indi­vidu­ality in its employees. This unhap­pi­ness seems to have gripped the nation, which is exper­i­en­cing an epi­demic of spon­tan­eous human explo­sions. George is wor­ried that he might be next, espe­cially since he keeps dreaming that he’s actu­ally his famous ancestor, General George Washington.

Although work seems to take up much of George’s mind­share, he has a huge house, a beau­tiful wife (the lovely Judy Greer) and a son. But he doesn’t seem to actu­ally do any­thing with his life. His wife is addicted to an Oprah-like tele­vi­sion show, his son never leaves his room, and he pur­sues his hob­bies list­lessly and alone. And, oh yeah, he’s impotent.

Visioneers strides pretty con­fid­ently into Brazil ter­ritory, even with its tiny budget, with the same far­cical level of satire about cor­porate con­trol. It mostly suc­ceeds on this level, with sev­eral run­ning gags that kept me laughing (the Jeffers’ one-finger greeting among them). And Galafianakis is excel­lent, showing flashes of pas­sion even though he’s basic­ally playing depressed for the whole film. But like the “happy ending” ver­sion of Brazil, the film fails when it sug­gests that some form of romantic love is the solu­tion to all George’s prob­lems. His pur­suit of ex-coworker Charisma (Mia Maestro) seems mean­ing­less when the Jeffers Corporation seems to con­trol the entire society, including the gov­ern­ment. Instead of pur­suing his indict­ment of the cor­porate agenda to its logical end, first-time dir­ector Drake seems to cop out with a pat ending. Sex with a pretty girl isn’t going to change the world after all.

Official site of the film

(7/10)