American highways are cluttered. They are jam packed with irresponsible and reckless drivers. Accidents and road rage aside, the most grievous offense committed every day is rubbernecking. This brings us to The Marc Pease Experience. This movie is like a car accident on the side of the highway, or a massive train wreck on T.V. You know it is none of your business but for some reason beyond our comprehension we are drawn to look, to stare and to lose track of all other thoughts. This may cause traffic jams and indelible frustration but we all need to see it to believe it. This is the only explanation no matter how razor thin I can offer for why I endured ninety minutes of torture.
My best friend and editor asked me how I could watch a movie whose star is such a "horrible loser"? My answer is above, I have no idea why, but once I noticed the bodies piling up on the side of the road I could not divert my curious eyes. Ben Stiller plays a high school music teacher. I remember we had nicknames for secondary school music teachers and most of them rhyme with molester. Stiller’s character is a placating self-indulged wannabe who shamelessly hits on high school women who are vulnerable and insecure enough to fall for his limited yet situationally seductive charm. Whereas this might sometimes be orchestrated to seem funny, in this case it is nauseating. Stiller plays a good guy reasonably well and a character we can easily loath easily. In this case he has succeeded in making the audience at once feel disgust and intrigue. While denying Marc Pease any assistance in pursuing his dream (which he encouraged in the first place), he is busy receiving fellatio from the unsuspecting guy's girlfriend. This teacher would be a wonderful mentor for anybody…seeking heartbreak and disillusionment, essentially anyone who is still "Gothic" and thinks it is cool.
Marc Pease (Jason Schwartzman) is eight years removed from high school. He is a professional (I use that word in the loosest sense) limousine driver. He sports a pony tail, rarely shaves and has one goal in life: to pursue a career in the music industry. He wants his band which has recently rapidly decreased in size from 8 to 4, to go pro. In order to make this dream a reality he has a choice to make, either sell his grandmother’s house to pay for the recording studio demo fees, or lose the band forever and along with it his vision for the future.
Unfortunately a monkey wrench is thrown into the equation when he hears a tape of his girlfriend singing with the music teacher. Embarrassingly the audio proves they had a sixty-nine fest in the music room. Talk about hitting the high notes, I pray for Christine Taylor that Stiller does not chirp like a Rescue Ranger during climaxes as he does here on tape. This discovery leads to Pease breaking up with her, finally having his moment in the sun by leading the high school musical "The Wiz (ard of Oz!)" and to the band’s dismemberment.
One year later (the movie’s ending is a flash forward scene) our hopeless main character is a professional singer. Hurray for him…oh wait is his audience ten people? Is he still awful and now has no backup singers? Perhaps this is not a happy ending. Oh well, we are all legends in our own minds. Two thumbs down, Stiller and Schwartzman need a checkup…by the psychiatrist.
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