One of the most infamous turkeys in modern Hollywood history, Movie 43, was created through a series of favors. The directors, including Peter Farrelly, recruited friends, clients, co-workers, and the curious over multiple years to appear in the loosely structured sketch film.
By the time they got to filming a new segment, most had forgotten they had even worked on the project. It became a bad fever dream, one easily dismissed as a stupid mistake years earlier.
When Movie 43 finally came out, most were luckily established enough that it didn't hurt their careers too badly. Had it come out any earlier, the sight of Hugh Jackman with testicles for a chin would have ended Wolverine's career before it began.
That same stink wafts over every inch of Outcome, Jonah Hill's bizarre vanity project, out this week on Apple TV. It's an ugly, painfully unfunny, and amateurishly stitched together half-film that feels like the result of many people owing Hill several favors.
Hill writes, directs, and stars in a prominent role. He fails at each task. The story about a former child star, Reef Hawk (Keanu Reeves), who ends up as the target of blackmail and under threat of "being cancelled", is painfully dated and woefully tone-deaf, playing out like a boomer's shower argument.
Most jokes were hacky ten years ago; others were never funny to begin with. The script exists in the same bubble that helped birth Cabin Boy and Freddie Got Fingered. A sunless dimension where good taste goes to die.
The direction is flat and lifeless, leaving veterans like Martin Scorsese to do their own thing, while potentially rich actors in need of steady guidance, like Reeves, are hopelessly lost. At no point does the film find a rhythm. Instead, it stomps and flails everywhere like a dying wildebeast.
Then there's Hill's performance as Ira Slitz, Hawk's crisis lawyer. It's hard to say what Hill is trying to do here, but it has "Joe Pantoliano told us to leave him alone" written all over it.
At 84 minutes in length, Outcome feels every minute as long as Killers of the Flower Moon, only with fewer laughs. It attempts to skewer Hollywood narcissism, PR spin, the toxic nature of child stars, parasocial relationships, and, on a meta-level, the industry itself in the style of Robert Altman's The Player.
But Hill is no Altman, and Outcome has none of the wit or insight of any film it tries to emulate. In an attempt to satirize the superficial aspects of the film industry, it only highlights its own desperately vain existence.
Outcome is not The Player, it's not Living in Oblivion, it isn't even Action. It's a watered-down version of all three that wants to be included in the company but refuses or is unable to engage with the satire that made them work.
By the time we have to suffer through a third extended sequence where Hill riffs on his Pantoliano imitation, it feels like a punishment for some cosmic error we all must collectively atone for.
Everyone involved has been better, even Hill. In some time, this too will be forgotten. If Hugh Jackman can survive Movie 43, everyone here will be fine.
