Visioneers (2008)

Visioneers is a film you've probably never heard of. In fact, it's probably only seen the light of day at all because its star, Zack Galifianakis, was in the far more successful and big-budget The Hangover, which brought him to the attention of most people.

The plot is your basic Corporate Dystopia. George Washington Winsterhammerman (Galifianakis) works for the Jeffers Corporation (the largest and most profitable corporation in the world) which has basically sucked all the life out of people. The negative side-effects of this mindless existence has caused people to explode when they get too excited. George has begun dreaming, one of the warning signs before explosion, so much of the film concerns George and his wife (played by Judy Greer, who you'll know as the female lead's kinda wacky girlfriend in every romantic comedy ever) living with this fear of George's soon to be exploding.

The movie is not over-the-top funny, instead drawing its comedy from the overall ridiculousness of the situations that the characters approach as totally normal. Galifianakis normally plays a crazy man who thinks himself to be the only sane man in a crazy world, but in this case, he's the only sane man in a crazy world. He's not only the unlikely hero of the story, but he's also an unlikely protagonist; for much of the film there are characters undergoing far more radical changes than he is, his wife, his son, his brother, for instance.

The film doesn't exactly drag in places, but it's also quite clear there are spots where it's not quite firing on all cylinders, either. There is a minimalist approach to dialogue, with a lot of repetition, and long stretches of film where the camera focuses on Galifianakis experiencing some form of inner struggle, as demonstrated by his hangdog expression.

Ultimately, the film resolves into a love story, which actually is played to a largely positive effect here, rounding out its depressing soliloquy on the evils of corporate drone-ism.

Visioneers isn't doing anything exceptionally novel, either in terms of plot or of character. It's basically a Wes Anderson film without Wes Anderson, but it's still, on the whole, good. I wouldn't go out of my way to see it, but if you want to kill a couple of hours, you could do a whole lot worse. Give it a try, if you have time.