Outside of his wildly experimental work in TV comedy (“Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” “Bedtime Stories”), Tim Heidecker has made a name for himself embodying variations on the cringingly awkward doofus you’d do anything to avoid talking to at your friend’s next BBQ. Few are more skilled than Heidecker at playing passive-aggressive and entitled jerks: you could argue he’s the Michael Jordan of middling white men. Heidecker’s squirmy screen presence has given a boost to works as varied as “The Comedy,” Rick Alverson’s discomfiting takedown of irony as a protective cocoon in modern hipster culture, and “Eastbound and Down,” where he played a snide suburban foil to Danny McBride’s bombastic Kenny Powers. Heidecker was most certainly one of the more memorable components of Jordan Peele’s tangled and often maddening “Us,” but the truth is that he’s often most compelling when starring in a project in which he has some degree of creative control.
“Mister America” is the latest feature-length dose of uncut Heidecker. It’s a spin-off of the cult program “On Cinema at the Cinema,” in which Heidecker and co-host Gregg Turkington offer inexplicable and often meaningless insight into various films, which they review via a popcorn-based rating system. The long game of “On Cinema” sees Heidecker’s alter ego dissolving into a puddle of megalomania over the course of ten seasons, often making on-screen appearances with bruises and black eyes, and espousing ill-informed political talking points i.e. calling for the execution of Hillary Clinton (somehow, this strange arc actually manages to have a payoff in director Eric Notarnicola’s new movie).
“Mister America,” as any fan of Heidecker’s would expect, is defiantly weird, dry as a bone, and very, very funny. It will probably play better with Heidecker’s legion of fans than with those who aren’t familiar with the likes of “Decker” and “Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie,” but that doesn’t mean the film isn’t a success on its own strange terms. This is a singular, sometimes thrillingly alienating comedic vision that Heidecker has helmed with the help of Notarnicola (who worked as an editor on the great “Nathan For You,” which shares this movie’s deadpan sensibility) and co-writer Turkington. If you’re not on these guys’ wavelength yet, this film is unlikely to convert you. That said, “Mister America” offers a procession of droll, absurd pleasures, although it probably won’t land well with those who stumble into the film by chance, unprepared for the abundance of unchecked silliness that is to follow.
In “Mister America,” Heidecker plays a familiar version of his typical smarmy-jackass persona. This time, Heidecker has narrowly escaped a damning murder charge after hosting an EDM festival that resulted in the deaths of eighteen people (the deaths were the result of hazardous vape juice, in a running gag that is all the more peculiar when you consider that the filmmakers conceived of this joke well before people actually started dying from bootleg vape cartridges). If you think something as potentially career-ending as a murder trial is enough to stop Mr. Heidecker from running for district attorney of San Bernadino, think again. If you think Heidecker’s complete and utter lack of experience and political credibility will hold him back from gunning for this coveted position – also, think again.
It quickly comes as no surprise that Heidecker is not running for the D.A. mantle in order to better the lives of San Bernardino residents, although he theatrically claims that his low-rent grassroots campaign is his “last play.” On the contrary, Heidecker will stop at nothing to take down prosecutor Vincent Rosetti (Don Pecchia), whom he obsessively refers to as a “rat.” What ensues is a portrait of one pathetic man grasping for a sliver of relevance in an all-too-recognizable American hellscape that seems all but completely indifferent to his existence.
The conceit of an underqualified, narcissistic buffoon running for public office against a far more capable candidate is not necessarily a novel one. That said, it is topical. The comparisons to our current president aren’t lost on Heidecker, whose discography as a musician includes an album of Trump-inspired, Randy Newman-esque ballads. Throughout “Mister America,” Heidecker’s misbegotten would-be politico rails monomaniacally against the crime epidemic he believes now plagues San Bernardino and repeatedly promises to bring the city back to its “good old days,” if they ever actually existed. While Heidecker’s comedy has never been political, “Mister America” is the closest thing to satire that this collective has ever given us, and the movie’s biggest laughs are accompanied by the harsh sting of uncomfortable truths.
Heidecker fans will get exactly what they paid for with “Mister America”: inane stammering, uncomfortably protracted pauses, and brutally uncomfortable scenes of Heidecker coated in flop sweat as he slams Bud Lights and sucks on his oversized vape like a baby sucks on their pacifier. Turkington pops up at random intervals, mostly to champion his vast knowledge of unimportant movies (there’s a really funny running joke about the 1976 Disney Comedy “The Shaggy D.A.,” and a sequence where Turkington briefly extols the virtues of the Steve Martin/Queen Latifah vehicle “Bringing Down the House”) and rail against Heidecker’s egotism and hypocrisy. It all builds to a skin-crawling set piece that takes place at a San Bernardino town hall meeting – one that goes downhill quick and leaves Heidecker’s character thrashing about like a spoiled infant who’s been deprived of his favorite toy.
If there’s one overriding criticism that can be leveled at “Mister America,” it’s that the film occasionally feels like an extended in-joke engineered solely for hardcore Heidecker fans. The film takes place in the immediate aftermath of the last season of “On Cinema,” and the shaggy narrative is littered with in-jokes and easter eggs that will probably only make sense if you’re a loyal “Gregghead” or “Timhead.” Obviously, there’s a perverse integrity in creating something with zero crossover potential that’s intended mostly for die-hard fans. And yet large swaths of “Mister America” are so niche in their appeal that one can only wonder how the film as a whole will translate to those who are not a part of Heidecker’s devoted cult of admirers, or if it will at all.
Still, it’s hard to complain when a movie is this original, prescient, and straight-up bizarre. If you think that Tim Heidecker is a genius, or if you’re tickled by the concept of a moron who literally gets away with murder and sets out to clear his name by sabotaging the campaign of the man who put him in the defendant’s seat, “Mister America” will hit your sweet spot. If you find what Heidecker does baffling or offensive, this probably isn’t the movie for you. In other words: “Mister America” is either brilliant or tedious, and perhaps a bit of both. If nothing else, the film cements its star as one of our more unique and uncompromising comic visionaries. He’s a maestro at personifying the utter mediocrity of smug white guys, and “Mister America” might just be his Symphony number nine. [B+]
