Numb
A common occurrence in the current film market is troubled or interesting/challenging productions with fairly well known stars going direct to DVD (Colin Hanks has three coming out within the next few months), when they used art house releases. The thinking is that most films are probably terrible, like the direct to video films of old, cheap and inept. I can’t say that about the Matthew Perry vehicle Numb, which is not a great film, or even really a good one, but it broaches an interesting subject; people who suffer from depersonalization, everything doesn’t seem very real to them, and people are like ghosts. No emotional connection is made and they get severely depressed and sleep all day. The writer/director Harris Goldberg wanted to pay tribute to his father, who suffered from DP, but he should have probably made a documentary instead. Scene after scene explains the disease, to the point of literally quoting medical dictionaries, and the characters, apart from Perry belong to some woman hating fantasy. The females are all foolish and have undiagnosed Tourette’s and fall into the Madonna or whore category. The problem is that this isn’t a very visual ailment, and so Perry mostly appears whiny and annoying, and it doesn’t make sense that these supposedly sensible women keep throwing themselves at him. Still, a theatrical release shouldn’t have been out of the question.
