Primer (2004)

Primer is a movie that grinds my gears because its proponents say it is complex and momentous – labels I would personally confer on Memento or Pi. So let me tell you, for all its technojargon and pseudo mumblecore wannabe indie virtue, Primer is no Pi and it is certainly no Memento. Primer was made on a budget of $7K, which its fans claim as a virtue, but to which I say: If you made a Viennese sacher torte of a movie on a shoestring budget, that would be awesome – but you made a chicken pot pie on a shoestring budget, so what’s the big deal? The dialog is largely unintelligible throughout – and I have watched the film 3 times over 6 years, each time trying to give it another chance. (Now on streaming, you can watch it as much as you like.) The technobabble makes little sense, even to an engineer; at least it avoids (I think) “subspace damping fields” and “resonance coils.” Primer’s fans write tracts and treatises online trying to explain the brilliance of the plot; since when did needing extrajudicial explanations make a murky, turgid plot as slim and elegant as Esther Williams? A movie is good if it stands on its own and doesn’t leave you ten times more confused than when you started. A movie is brilliant if it hits you with a lightning flash near the ending, and successive viewings fill in the gaps of your perception because it was already all there to see in the first place. Memento meets this test in spades; Primer falls far short. (Sorry, “too cool to comprehend” is not a movie category.) What really burns my brisket though is to find that Primer partisans have stuffed the ballot box at Netflix by submitting 3,184 5-star “reviews” – of which I estimate more than 80% are duplicates and nonreviews. Hackery is one sin; arrogance is another; dissembling is a third; but hijacking just takes the cake. Burn this piece of celluloid to the ground. 1.5 stars. (4-26-2016)