So I got a Redbox code for a free rental, so I stopped by a Redbox to see what might be worth watching. I saw a picture of a bearded guy in front of a smiley face, with the eyes placed kinda like Mickey Mouse ears. Most interesting-looking movie promo image in the selection. I read the info. It’s about a guy who has a boring life working at a very prosperous job, and he must bring some excitement to his life. It’s a comedy starring Zach Galifianakis, a comedian I’m pretty sure I’ve heard the acts of and enjoyed, but I have no idea what stuff of his I heard. With no internet handy to read reviews, I went on the cover art & description alone, which sounded promising. I really felt like I needed a comedy, anyway.

I watched the first 30 minutes of this movie and had to stop. Utterly boring! How is this a COMEDY?! I decided to then check reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 70%, which is 4% below Pixar’s Cars, which I liked somewhat. The reviews were mixed. I decided to take the plunge and see if it would actually get good, although no movie should go 30 minutes without being good. It got better. It finally got to…. “watchable”. I shall rate it no higher than that because it’s absolutely boring, and yet it’s not helping me get to sleep either. I couldn’t help thinking of what it was like in the theater during this movie, but Wikipedia says it was direct-to-DVD. I’m not surprised. I did think that a Riff Trax(from the guys of Mystery Science Theater 3000 & is pretty much the same thing without the sidestory & robots) might be good for this movie, and I couldn’t help blurting out a few cynicisms, but there’s no Riff Trax on this movie and I’m not about to make one. It takes multiple watchings of the movie to come up with funny things to say, and helps to have multiple people. I now respect the Riff Trax/MST3000 guys more because I realize how much torture it would be to sit through horrible movies multiple times.

The proper genre for Visioneers is “Boring Satire”, right next to Starship Troopers. ST was a satire against government, war, and manipulation. Visioneers is a satire against being a boring bored boredy-pants cog in the machine. It showed the cogginess too much. They managed to make exploding humans boring, how ’bout that?

Oh and placing the smiley face eyes to look like Mickey Mouse ears? THE most disappointing false expectation of the film. Probably wasn’t an intentional look, but I did expect some parody of Disney somewhere or some reference to Imagineers, the people who create the Disney theme park attractions. No such luck.