Chabert Watch! A New Wave (2006)

Watched:  05/11/2025

Format:  Fawesome

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jason Carvey

I don't know if I've ever experienced second-hand embarrassment for my generation of film dudes this intensely before, but here we are.

I assume the name of the movie is trying to wink at the French New Wave, and the belief that this movie was somehow echoing that well established concept.  But I don't know what the filmmakers meant, and I don't want to come out of the gate too strong with how irritating that is as (a) a joke or, (b) way worse, if it's meant sincerely.  But it is indicative of how bad this movie is with comedy that I don't know their intention.

Arriving probably 7 years after the last time this movie might have been considered hep or cool in any way, like many first-time efforts, A New Wave (2006) doesn't know what it is, cramming in three movies or so here, but it sure is trying to work something out that's best left to therapy sessions for the writer/director and doesn't need to involve me as an audience member.  It's also a great peek at the post-Tarantino fantasies of LA filmmakers who all saw something they liked in Tarantino and thus wanted to put their own brand on lo-fi crime ideas.  By 2006, we're just saying it out loud, I guess.

That's paired with a view of women as "unobtainable, mysterious problems" that seemed to permeate film in both studio and indie flicks in this era.  

And none of it works.

Wildly, in addition to Lacey Chabert, this movie co-stars John Krasinski.  I have to assume it was the last thing he did before walking onto the set of The Office and his life changed forever (Krasinski making this movie was not landing Emily Blunt).

Our Hero is a would-be artist (Andrew Keegan) - like, artist as in painter of paintings.  He works a day job as a bank teller, which he finds soul crushing as indicated by his boss with big hair who wants him to do his job well (this is supposed to be comedic).  He has two friends, Krasinski and Dean Edwards - who is from New York but playing British here.  I'm guessing he's a Guy Ritchie nod.

Krasinski is obsessed with heist and crime films (understandable) and believes he can use them to figure out how to rob Keegan's bank.  

Krasinski dresses as a character from Reservoir Dogs.  He constantly cites movies.  Ironically, he does not recognize that he's the character in crime movies who has a terrible idea that everyone seems unable to say no to - despite the fact everyone knows it's a bad idea dreamed up by an idiot (maybe one of my least favorite movie tropes).  He is, however, far, far more interesting than Keegan, who is a limp rag.

Keegan is dating Chabert, whose parents include William Sadler and Caprice Beneditti.  Sadler plays a very 00's-era conservative dad,* and these dudes were very real, so... well done I guess.  Chabert says she believes in our guy, which is nice, but he's also dead broke and selling paintings is not easy.  Thus the bank day job and plans for the bank heist job. 

It's a @#$%ing thankless role for Chabert, who is stuck with the role of being pretty and concerned for Our Hero and devoted to him for no discernible reason other than that was a role during this era and our writer/ director is fantasizing, so why not give himself this girl?

The entire movie feels like it was shot guerilla style, like they had two hours in any given location, threw on all the lights, and started shooting.   The transfer on Fawesome was SD and bad.  The audio was iffy at best.  I assume this was shot on film because of the year, but it just looks awful, like every choice was made entirely on the fly and with no eye for a good shot.  

But the real issue is that it wants to be a comedy sometimes, a melodrama about an artist compromising other times - and one can immediately guess that this is the filmmaker making some statement about chasing his Hollywood dreams versus settling into a life of practicality.  And that Hollywood is killing him.  Yeah yeah.  we get it.

There's some odd bits that are meant to be funny, but comedy is hard.  The French guy who sells guns?  Chabert's oddly sexy mom as someone to hit on?  And neither really goes anywhere - they just feel lifted from other movies.

And that's the weird thing about the movie - literally everything feels like it came from some other movie.

Is it stupid?

I mean, on the scale of stuff we've been watching lately, I feel like it's well intentioned, but it also feels like a movie frankensteined from other, largely mediocre movies.  It's Hollywood's indie film scene talking to itself but by regurgitating other stuff.  

It's a movie that insists the paintings we're seeing are good and interesting, but... they are both derivative and not worth anyone's time.  And there's a connection there that I am not going to spell out.  Hilariously, the movie ends with a portrait of Chabert that is just an absolute nightmare, and they should have been stopped before putting it in the film.**

There's also a mid-credits sequence with Krasinski in prison meaningfully handing Chabert a screenplay "to explain everything", and I hated it.

Chabert is fine. 

I am very much looking forward to reaching the end of this portion of Chabert's career as an available name actress for hire.  But I do feel like I'm learning a lot about how a career can work.  

for the record, Caprice Beneditti is distractingly good looking, so the "everyone's hitting on here" bit sure feels like it should go somewhere

*we once spent a meal at a kinda-expensive restaurant at a table too close to a family where the girl had brought her boyfriend home to meet the parents and dad thought the thing to do was absolutely humiliate not just the guy but, really, anyone with a sense of human decency as he Limbaugh-bloviated while mom and daughter just sat in silence.  This went on for an hour, mostly unchecked.  I wanted to take the boyfriend with us when we left.  The dad was so loud you could hear him for about fifteen feet in any direction.  

**it's a terrible portrait from a technique standpoint, vaguely insulting to Chabert, and has given her a gigantic bosom for reasons I'll leave it to you to guess