Anchors Aweigh
(USA, 71 min.)
Dir. Matt Barats
Prod. Allie Viti, Whit Conway
Programme: Midnight Madness (International premiere)
Matt Barats’ cringe comedy Anchors Aweigh toys with the tropes of non-fiction to present a surreal, awkward, and at times obnoxious self-portrait. While some people will be won over by his hapless experiences including dating a future Broadway star, mining childhood home videos, or finding solace in an airport-adjacent marina, others may be left feeling that their time could have been better spent doing anything else.
The film follows a slew of successful projects with gormless guys wandering through the greater New York City area. The HBO series How to With John Wilson sees the streets filled with unnoticed stories, where a landlord becomes a kind of surrogate grandmother. Even scaffolding assumes romantic beauty.
Nathan Fielder, an executive producer of Wilson’s show, has also amplified this weaponised awkwardness on shows like The Rehearsal. There’s a shtick here as these comics build a zeitgeist-y world where the surreal and autobiographical is well received by contemporary audiences, following the likes of Ross McElwee whose experiments bending non-fiction in films like Sherman’s March echoes strongly in these projects.
It’s clear why there’s a hunger for something like Anchors Aweigh. Given that Allie Viti, who helped produce Wilson’s History of Concrete, and Whit Conway, a former staffer at John Oliver’s equally successful Last Week Tonight, there’s built-in anticipation that Barat’s take on the métier of morose meandering would hit a home run.
Unfortunately, it all feels so self-serving. There’s simply little here to actually hang onto. Barats assumes, rather than earns, his audience’s interest in his foibles, frustrations, and exploration of his past self. It’s akin to throwing noodles at a wall to see what sticks. When the effort elicits only dreariness, no life preserver that can be thrown to rescue those of us distressed by how achingly boring it all is.
So while one can pretzel oneself to try and find charm in this charmless fare, perhaps warmed by the tinkly score, or amused by Barat’s multiple blunders in some sadistic, voyeuristic way, the effort isn’t worth it, especially since far more engaging directors and subjects navigate this this space with far more aplomb. Anchors Aweigh feels entirely untethered, strung along by a half-baked concept that could barely carry a short. It’s hopelessly adrift.
