George Washington Winsterhammerman leads a simple life. He is a level 3 Tunt at the Jeffers Corporation, the largest corporation in the world. He is a model employee, he is always the first to arrive and is courteous and professional with his fellow employees giving a hardy "Jeffers morning" salute [coincidence that it looks like flipping the bird?] to them as they arrive each morning. The day starts normally enough, greetings are exchanged and work has begun, when George receives a phone call from his supervisor, Charisma, an exchange he engages in happily, she even puts smiley faces on post-its with each work order, and learns that one of his fellow employees will not be coming in to work today because he has exploded. George is advised to carry on with his work but he becomes troubled when he believes that he has come down with one of the early symptoms of exploding. George is starting to dream.
The humor in Visioneers is often sly and underhanded and works marvelously. Any attempt to overplay this hand and the Drake brothers would have surely failed. It is in its subtlety and quiet discourse that the movie works the best. It is often laugh out loud funny even those times when the Drake brothers make on concentrated effort to make it look like it doesn't want to be. That's good comedy. But their story also knows when to slow down and become introspective. While observing all the craziness and melancholy around himself there is also perfectly placed opportunities for George to resume his search for happiness and look for the answer to his question: what makes him happy.
A lot also hinges on the performance of Zach Galifianakis and he is so spot on in this role. At first I felt Steve Carell like vibes but as Visioneers moved along and the story developed those inclinations went away and it was all Zach. Zach is also surrounded by a great supporting cast. James LeGros plays his brother Julieen, once a Jeffers Corp. employee but he has since left the company, settled into his brother's pool house and taken up pole vaulting as a means to find true happiness. Judy Greer plays his wife Michelle and she tries to find happiness through a book, going through the hundreds of steps inside trying to find what makes her happy, guided by her on-air happiness guru, daytime television host Sara, played by Missi Pyle. But the success of this film and the root of its charm is in Galifanakis' performance.
And that leads to the gist of Visioneers: finding what makes you truly happy. While nothing new and a fine pursuit itself it is nice to have such a gently humorous reminder of what life's goal should be. The Jeffers Corp., in an effort to increase productivity has confined that search to meets its own goals and the resulting outcome is exploding employees so they go further to stifle thought and emotions, the things that lead to such a pursuit, even going as far as doing so outside of its employee base, at the bequest of the President of the United States in fact. George soon comes to the realization of what makes him happy, he finds it, and we cross our fingers and hope for a happy future for him.
Visioneers is charming, funny and worth a look.
two things:
1) finally!
2) as a music lover; i read that too fast. Boards of Canada.
Yes. The music is also really good too.