Week Ending 5/15/26

I'm not sure there's a more perfect film for the populist and fascistic moment we find ourselves living in right now than Alberto Vázquez's Decorado. It's not therefore a coincidence that the Goya-winning short film upon which he's expanded it from came out in 2016. That's the year Trump took office. It was six years after Viktor Orbán won Hungary and the year before Marine Le Pen's second attempt at the French presidency. Things have only become worse.

The narrative is superficially about a middle-aged mouse named Arnold (Asier Hormaza) desperately trying to stave off the depression of a life that's gone off-the-rails. Unemployed for too long with a wife (Aintzane Gamiz's María) who's grown distant as a result, the very world around him begins to crack alongside his own deteriorating sanity. Birds sound like modems. Dialogue is delivered like abstract, often misanthropic philosophy. And everyone is watching him.

It's no surprise that the synopsis and marketing push therefore lean towards its similarities to films like The Truman Show wherein the main character awakens to the reality that everything they know is a lie. This assumption leads us to read what happens as surreal fantasy—the delusions or dreams of a sick mouse losing his grip thanks to thinking that he's the only sane mind in an insane world. We brace for the lights to go out and the truth to be revealed.

Except that's not what Vázquez is actually doing. Not really. Because Arnold isn't the only one who feels this way. His friends Ramiro (Ander Vildósola) and Crazy Chicken (Raúl Dans) are suffering from symptoms of derealization too. They've all begun to question the boundaries of their surroundings and the specter of a malicious owl who patrols the forest and murders at night. They've started to become victims to the police violence that was meant to secure them peace.

The city of "Anywhere" is subsequently revealed as the prison it's always been. A community built upon the façade of freedom and charity as long as you accept the fact that the giant capitalist machine known as ALMA is the one granting both. They own the cops. They administer the "happy" pills that turn citizens into pliably docile cogs. They disappear, bribe, and/or recondition those who dare to upset the applecart that serves the rich on the backs of the poor.

That air of "Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!" isn't a script as much as a communal coping mechanism. Those friendly neighbors always stopping by to give their two cents aren't actors as much as Gestapo ensuring ALMA has eyes and ears around every potential threat to the bigger picture. If anything, Arnold is better off believing he's in a TV show since the truth proves far more nightmarish.

What I really love about Decorado, however, is that the surrealism coexists with the horror. While Vázquez lifts many curtains (both figuratively and literally), he never explains away the impossible. Arnold might not be crazy, but that doesn't mean María isn't actually falling prey to a depression fairy. If mushroom people and judgmental pigeons exist, why can't ghosts? The absurdity of the animation only augments the inherent absurdity of their dystopian society.

It's not therefore a mistake that one of the books in the background has the title 1984 on its cover. The film is showing us how monetizing our lives for public consumption and entertainment feeds into the surveillance state Big Brother yearns to enact. It quite literally gifts it the infrastructure with which to spy on us via social media platforms and data tracking. You aren't crazy for thinking you're being watched. Oftentimes you've volunteered for it.

There's a ton of layers to what's happening on-screen as a result. ALMA is spying on Arnold to keep him in line. Their executive Gregory (Iñaki Beraetxe) is spying on him to steal his wife. Duck Roni (Vázquez) isn't following him as much as he's just another version of him trying to reconcile fame with squalor and survival with betrayal. Because where is the exit? How can you escape? It's one thing to imagine a better world, but another to discover this is as good as it gets.

I appreciate that nihilistic bent. We've been fed so many examples of hope despite the growing genocidal sentiments and actions sweeping the planet that it's nice to finally watch a film that reckons with the reality that it might already be too late. Maybe we should just take the pills and lose ourselves to group think. Maybe we should embrace the little bits of joy the establishment allows us to keep as it leeches resources and renders us destitute.

So, don't feel bad if you hear the chants of "Decorado" and find yourself floating into the tractor beam of compliance like a moth to flame. Sure, the alternative could be a land of true egalitarian independence just hidden from view by the shadow of ALMA malice, but what if it's just the realization that fascism has simply won everywhere? What if you find the door out of your soundstage only to walk into another? Or, worse, the vacuum of space?

Would that change your mind? Would you resign yourself to becoming one of them? Or will you fight even harder? Because the nihilism on-screen doesn't mean it's too late in our world. Maybe Arnold running around in circles is a cautionary tale of what awaits us if we don't allow ourselves to be woken up earlier than him. Maybe this absurdly bleak farce is what radicalizes you. As Crazy Chicken screams at his oppressors, "You've created me!"

9/10

A moment of opportunity arises when eighteen-year-old Jeremy's (Sam Nivola) substitute driver's ed instructor Mr. Rivers (Kumail Nanjiani) realizes he forgot his coffee. Despite having both arms locked in shoulder-length casts, no one else volunteers to fetch the drink. So, when he's far enough away from the car, Jeremy hits the gas with three classmate hostages in the backseat. He's desperate to save his tenuous romance with college freshman Samantha (Lilah Pate).

Director Bobby Farrelly and writer Thomas Moffett take extra pains to remind us three or four times that these teens (Sophie Telegadis' Evie, Aidan Laprete's Yoshi, and Mohana Krishnan's Aparna eventually evolve into accomplices) are "of age." It's okay that Jeremy is still dating Sam. It's okay that they eventually crash a sexualized frat party. Just because they're still in high school doesn't mean they're minors. So, nothing that might happen can be construed as statutory rape.

The funniest part of this obsessive bit of narrative caution (besides being fully out of character for a filmmaker who made a name with movies that intentionally sought to cross those exact lines as a badge of honor) is that Driver's Ed doesn't ever overtly place these characters in situations where it matters. We can infer that sex is happening in the background considering a liberal use of the word "cheating," but there's no risk of being brought up on decency charges.

It's further proof that the whole conservative movement against "woke"—a term they appropriated incorrectly to feign outrage—is a manufactured soap box floating in the air without a foundation. Farrelly talks about wanting to homage classic John Hughes coming-of-age films, but he and Moffett don't seem to be able to comprehend that doing so should mean reinventing the mold for today's generation rather than just adding a contemporary filter to tired humor.

Because the moments on-screen where emotion and vulnerability are highest often prove to be the ones that feel the most inauthentic. It's not just the "you can't sue us because the characters are eighteen" energy that's more about being afraid comedy truly is "dead" than trying to conjure humor. I get it, though. Farrelly and his brother made their careers from punching down. That ablism and bigotry is so ingrained that he's adding disclaimers instead of growing.

Don't therefore be surprised that Driver's Ed is much closer to a Dumb and Dumber than a The Breakfast Club (both classics in their own right). Sure, the stars are teens and Principal Fisher's (Molly Shannon) murder board puts Post-Its by her AWOL students that read "Hopeless" and "Basket Case," but this is a road trip. The fact we keep going back to the adults at all is honestly weird. Shannon and Nanjiani get their John Kapelos/Paul Gleason moment, but why?

The moment you segregate your cast by having the kids drive to Chapel Hill while the adults stay home, the latter automatically become vestigial limbs. This is especially true when you also have Security Guard Walsh (Tim Baltz) actually chasing them on the road. He's in the action. He and his ex-partner Lee (Bri Giger) are actually interacting with the main cast. Shannon and Nanjiani should have just disappeared like Alyssa Milano's cameo as Jeremy's mother.

Lean into the road aspect and turn this into Adventures in Babysitting instead. That's kind of what they do anyway as Walsh and Lee's chase stays one-step behind if not diverted off their trail completely. That's where the real fun is. The teens taking this opportunity to escape the constraints of their own expectations and desires to discover what they want amongst likeminded yet superficially different peers. Where did things go wrong? How can they get on track?

It's the dynamic between Evie and Jeremy as they obviously start falling in love while also providing the other an example of the person they wish they could be rather than the one they think they are. It's learning about Yoshi and Aparna's past friendship and what pulled them apart to prove how important it is at any age to check up on people and see how they're doing. It's the reality that experiences are much harder to fall on deaf ears than words.

So, there is a lot to like here. I'm just not sure Farrelly was necessarily the right person to execute its intent or that Moffett's script was solid enough to allow him the chance. Too much felt stilted and unsure—a stark contrast to the young cast who do a wonderful job imbuing innocence, uncertainty, and sorrow without falling into depression. By comparison, Rob Grant's This Too Shall Pass (ironically also starring Laprete) achieves the same goals with confidence.

If nothing else, though, Driver's Ed does advance the Farrelly Brothers' "Seabass" lore by enlisting another former Boston Bruins icon to the big screen. I fell victim to a double take when asking "Is that Cam Neely?" back in the 90s and Bobby got me again thirty years later when Patrice Bergeron, Mr. Selke himself, arrived to spout French at the front of a classroom. It might not be as insane of a film debut as his former president of hockey operations, but it's just as surprising.

5/10

"A wonderful showcase for Aselton as an actor. She has written an emotionally complex role that’s built to provide her a stage with which to let loose and feel the roller coaster that is life beside another human while enduring fate’s cruel hand."

– Full thoughts at The Film Stage.