Not Cool (2014) Is the Worst Movie We've Ever Seen
This week, “Naptime Nightmares” really lives up to its name. This movie was a nightmare. There are no redeeming qualities (except maybe Drew Monson, but he played a rapey creep so it’s still bad). Every single moment of this “movie” was agony, and we both actively wished for the sweet release of death for the entire duration. And that’s both high and sober.
We figured our minisode this week should be tailored to the theme - so what better target than the subject of Olivia’s episode?
What’d Shane Dawson do this time?
So much. And so little.
Years ago, a short-lived reality TV show called The Chair sponsored two different filmmakers, Anna Martemucci and - you guessed it - Shane Dawson to take a pre-written script and adapt it into their own unique films. Both films are roughly about a group of college students coming home to their small Pennsylvania hometown over Thanksgiving break. Martemucci’s film is a sometimes-saccharine but startlingly honest coming of age story about letting go of the past and gracefully accepting change. It’s written and directed with sensitivity and wit.
Not Cool is about wanting to get laid.
I’m being glib, obviously, but there really isn’t much more to it than that. The A-plot consists of Scott (Shane Dawson’s first of three self-inserted characters), a heartthrob and “popular kid,” reconnecting with Tori (Cherami Leigh), the girl whose life he unwittingly ruined during high school. The B-plot is a painfully dragged out exercise in rape culture, with Joel (Drew Monson) trying desperately to manipulate the girl he’s obsessed with - Janie (Scott’s sister - played by Michelle Veintimilla) - to sleep with him. She never does, but Joel’s story ends with Janie hooking him up with three of her friends because she feels bad for friendzoning him. Neat.
What follows is a feature-length horror show filled with just about every -ism and -phobia you can think of. The “humor” is almost always a result of the degradation of minorities or oppressed groups - the blind, overweight/obese, Black, Latinx, Indian, homeless, women, and LGBTQ+ characters. Did I miss anyone? Never mind the strange fixation this movie has on sexual assault, rape, and pedophilia. Every attempt at a joke is rooted in the hatred of someone, and to add insult to injury, there isn’t an ounce of intelligence to be found in the screenwriting.
That is… a lot of offensiveness.
That’s all it is, bud. And knowing about Shane Dawson’s content from the early 2010s, it isn’t much of a surprise. But in his feature on The Chair, Shane made it sound like he was interested in shifting his career away from his 12-15 year old audience in favor of making more mature art. But with $250,000 in prize money on the line (which would be determined by a popular vote), he almost immediately regressed to what he knew his audience would like. With the knowledge that outrage and shock-value sell, he set out to make a full-length version of his sketch comedy. Which is to say, he made it racist and bad.
To some degree, I can understand wanting to make something low-risk and crowd-pleasing (which, for the record, this was not) in the name of having a good filming experience. Members of the production team even saw potential in Shane’s shock-value humor and tried their best to salvage the mess he’d made. But Shane blocked them at every turn, taking their critiques personally and verbally berating them when they expressed even the barest hint of disapproval. He directed the movie from a place of insecurity - all while starring in three different roles - and doomed himself to create, well, garbage.
What’s the worst part?
Where to begin? The pieces that stood out to Olivia and I were:
A homeless man - coincidentally one of two black bit-characters in the movie - says he’d rather eat sh*t than have Tori’s life, and then proceeds to do exactly that for a gratuitously long time. It’s gross for absolutely no reason and horrifically racist, and that scene was one of the reasons they had such a hard time finding actors. Oddly, most self-respecting actors didn’t want to be part of a project like this. Weird.
The same homeless man, for no reason at all, jiggles his junk in front of a train window. We’re talking full-frontal nudity. Full d*ck and balls. Rubbing all over the window. For like 5 seconds. Why? We’re still trying to figure that one out.
There are a concerning number of rape jokes. And, of course, one rape joke is too many. But Rape and sexual assault are played off to be funny in and of themselves. They aren’t part of the joke or a vehicle for a joke - the act of rape is the joke. In one particularly egregious scene, we see Scott actually literally raped by his ex-girlfriend on screen while he repeatedly yells his non-consent. This scene is at best a plot vehicle for Tori to get mad at him and at worst meant to be a funny, ha-ha moment. And what are the characters’ responses when Scott tells everyone that he was raped? “Dude, she’s like 90 pounds.” Later, Scott says she “tricked” his d*ck into getting hard, and Tori laughs it off. They never talk about it again.
Jesus.
Yeah. And that’s barely scratching the surface of this movie’s tastelessness.
Did you gain anything by watching this?
An aneurysm.
But really, I think this movie is perfectly emblematic of who Shane Dawson is as a person. Never mind the fact that he was a nightmare to work with and clearly tailored Scott’s character to be based on himself. Shane also reveals his own values and beliefs through his writing of Scott.
He believes everyone thinks he’s a mega-popular heartthrob, but deep down he’s really sensitive without a harmful bone in his body. This is evident by the film’s general thesis: Scott ruined Tori’s high school experience, but he’s excused by both the characters and the plot because he’s a photographer and didn’t mean to. He never apologizes and no one ever asks him to, because in Shane’s mind Scott is exonerated from the harm he caused.
Shane believes that grand gestures are enough to make up for shitty behavior. This one is directly on the page, as Scott attempts to “make amends” to Tori by shaving his beloved hair. The parallel here is clear - Shane views his own hair as valuable to his community, so he wrote Scott to put the same level of value on his own. Shane believes that removing this valuable part of himself is demonstrative of his remorse - when in reality, it’s simply a shock-value diversion from the fact that Shane/Scott hasn’t changed as a person. If he were really sorry, he would make action statements and commit to being a better person and friend. Oops.
Shane also believes that manipulation is a valid way of getting what you want, regardless of how others feel. This one is a doozy: when Scott decides that he has feelings for Tori, he runs to her house on Thanksgiving evening and basically invites himself into her home despite her obvious discomfort. He then pressures Tori into playing Dance Central (LOL) with him. She only agrees on the condition that, if she wins, he leaves her house. Now any normal person with compassion would understand that she’s deeply uncomfortable, take the hint, and leave immediately. But not Scott! His response: “And if I win, you have to kiss me.” This is played off as a totally normal response on Scott’s part - and when Tori verbally rips him apart and wins the game, Scott becomes depressed and manipulates her into feeling bad as he leaves. Tori is narrativized as the “bad guy” in this scenario for daring to have negative feelings about Scott’s presence and making him feel bad. No attention is paid to the fact that he invaded her privacy, violated her boundaries and comfort zone, and manipulated her. Interesting.
And this isn’t even counting the weird pedophilic tendencies this movie demonstrates. On multiple occasions we see examples of older adults preying on the lead characters - something that’s never really addressed further than a passing joke. With Shane’s history of preying on younger fans (see: Drew Monson and Lucas Cruikshank), it certainly doesn’t look good.
Shane is selfish. If I were going out on a limb, I’d say Shane Dawson is a narcissist. This doesn’t inherently mean he’s a bad person - in fact, there are plenty of people with Cluster B personality disorders who get treatment and are wonderful people. But Shane’s refusal to take criticism and self-obsession have clearly prevented him from assessing the harm he causes on a regular basis. He’s an unapologetic racist, sexist, ableist, etc. etc. etc. and doesn’t seem to have taken any real form of responsibility. Kind of like Scott.
Do yourselves a favor and never watch this movie. It isn’t worth the time it stole from us. The content is repulsive, the director is a narcissistic abuser, and there is absolutely no reason to suffer through it.