How to Tell if You Just Blew Good Money to See a Bad Independent Film

• The film can best be described as “gritty realism” if only because you get to watch every single character take a piss.

  
  
• The narration begins, “Mateo was ripe for adventure…”
  
  
• The entire original score is hummed.
  
  
• The movie proudly states it was “Inspired by the director’s college thesis on Ayn Rand.”
  
  
• One of the characters regularly smokes clove cigarettes, and it’s not played for laughs.
  
  
• The film opens with an extreme close-up of a fly resting on a woman’s cheek…and stays on that shot for a full ten minutes.
  
  
• The movie single-handedly spawns a new motion picture genre—“ninja ennui.”
  
  
• A character uses the word “jejune” when speaking of their dog.
  
  
• It’s billed as a romantic sex comedy but the only one getting any action is the robot.
  
  
• The film is about a group of unmotivated, unattached twentysomething slackers who spend their days bemoaning their fates in iambic pentameter.
  
  
• In the credits the producers thank numerous militias.
  
  
• The white girl with the dreadlocks is taken seriously.
  
  
• The story is told from the perspective of a frustrated writer, a disgruntled teen or a loquacious mime.
  
  
• The cast spends the entire 100 minutes sitting on a ratty couch in a Village studio apartment getting stoned, staring into space and engaging in deep, philosophical discussions about the musical direction of their band “Paper or Plastic.”
  
  
• The lesbians never make out.
  
  
• The indigent farm family all wear “Lucky Brand” overalls.
  
  
• The movie takes place completely in the kitchen, much to the obvious dismay of the director’s mother.
  
  
• The camera cuts to developing storm clouds whenever there is tension, to a sunny meadow whenever there is joy and to the contents of an unflushed toilet whenever possible.
  
  
• The film opens in a freshman philosophy class.
  
  
• The dream sequence takes up 90% of the film.
  
  
• The title song finds a rhyme for “Siddharta.”
  
  
• The director plays five major roles and operates the boom mic.
  
  
• The movie addresses third world famine and pestilence, by way of a cardiologist’s family in New Rochelle.
  
  
• Sexual politics is explored in a retirement community.
  
  
• The only character that doesn’t commit suicide is the wise cockatoo.