It's interesting how totally this misfires. By now we're all used to Borat & his politicized cousins in the "guerilla documentary" biz. Each interview here however is utterly, completely staged and frankly rather stagey-feeling (dilettante IHOP waitress Barbara Ehrenreich is documented pouring a cuppa joe, though I've not witnessed camera crews at the local waffle shack).
Combined with Lapham who seems to consider himself the second coming of Edith Wharton, that all would be quite tedious enough. Unfortunately somebody, probably having lingered a bit too long in film school, thought it would be a good idea to interlard the meet 'n greet segments with Busby Berkeley-style choreographed musical numbers. I can't do verbal justice to the awfulness of those; a friend compared a later example in the movie to an LSD flashback. If you stripped out those as well as the rest of the corny, on-the-nose soundtrack music this might be halfway watchable.
Combined with Lapham who seems to consider himself the second coming of Edith Wharton, that all would be quite tedious enough. Unfortunately somebody, probably having lingered a bit too long in film school, thought it would be a good idea to interlard the meet 'n greet segments with Busby Berkeley-style choreographed musical numbers. I can't do verbal justice to the awfulness of those; a friend compared a later example in the movie to an LSD flashback. If you stripped out those as well as the rest of the corny, on-the-nose soundtrack music this might be halfway watchable.