TIM AND ERIC'S BILLION DOLLAR MOVIE (2012)

It is no small miracle that Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim found each other.  I have a feeling that without each other, they would be alone in this world.  The stars and creators of Adult Swim's "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!", they revel in a type of humor that I must confess is usually beyond my understanding, which is saying a lot.  But as with Andy Kaufman and many misunderstood comedians, you get the feeling that they're making each other laugh, and sometimes that's enough.  That they were each able to find another person with the same sense of humor boggles the mind.

The word surrealist doesn't quite scratch the surface of their style.  Unlike Tom Green, the last mainstream comedian to try to make a surrealist film, they don't seek merely to push the envelope; they are more pointed than that.  True, they do throw a heap of gags at the wall and only a few do stick, but Tim and Eric are not desperate.  Critics might say they're trying too hard, but that is missing the point: they're playing the parts of people who are trying too hard.  Their character is the class clown who has no idea how to make you laugh, but gives it a go anyway.  It's inane, but that he tried in the first place is funny in itself.

What to call it?  Lame-ism?  Unfunny chic?  The funniest bits of Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie are structured like an office team-building video where the boss tries to show you his "lighter side" while still insisting you get that report in on time.  Though not always at the top of their game, Tim and Eric have a spot-on sense of what it sounds like when boring people try to be entertaining.  This sense is present even in their IMDb bios, which I believe they wrote themselves, claiming that their victory in the 2008 Webby awards was "based on excellence in the following criteria: Concept & Writing, Quality of Craft, Integration, Overall Experience." Oh, and Tim "was stabbed twice in the upper back while protecting an elderly woman from her son who was under the influence of hard drugs."

On a laugh-ratio level, Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie has far more misses than hits.  Strung together with only the loosest of plots, it follows Tim and Eric after they've supposedly made the highest-budgeted movie of all time.  More specifically, they took a studio's billion-dollar investment, blew it on themselves, and turned in a five-minute piece of trash starring a Johnny Depp impersonator.  The studio heads (Robert Loggia and William Atherton, good sports) threaten to kill them if they can't pay back the money, so they decide to rehabilitate a failing southwestern mall so they can make the billion dollars back.

Will Ferrell is very funny as the eccentric hustler who sells them the mall.  Twink Caplan is charming as a store owner who immediately captures Eric's attention.  As a preposterous holistic healer, Ray Wise need only appear and smile to get the biggest laugh in the movie.  I enjoyed the prologue featuring Jeff Goldblum (as "Chef Goldblum"), satirizing the discomfort of 3-D movies.  Several bits which satirize self-help and promotional videos are side-splitting.

Other gags don't go so well.  John C. Reilly (who's hilarious on Adult Swim as Tim and Eric's "Dr. Steve Brule") appears as a particularly disgusting character without any redeeming qualities, or laughs.  A sub-plot about Tim stealing the son of one of the store owners gets no laughs and goes nowhere.  Even Zach Galifianakis is more bizarre than funny as a Hollywood guru, and the usually-reliable Will Forte relies too heavily on foul language for laughs as the proprietor of the mall's sword shop.  Scenes which resort to graphic potty humor are the only ones which seem desperate and out of place.

I didn't laugh at many of the jokes in Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie.  I don't particularly "get" Tim and Eric in general.  But I've seen enough comedies to know that not everyone has to be in on the joke.  When everyone is, you get a watered-down piece of slush like Failure to Launch or Bad Teacher.  At the very least, I can say with confidence that the Tim and Eric movie was probably not screened for any focus groups.  Comedy usually represents what one person thinks is funny, or in this case, what two people think is funny.  Tim and Eric made the movie that was funny to them, and no one stood in their way.

** out of ****