"VHYes" - A blind watch that's worth a watch

Josh
Dec 18, 2024
4 min read

Jack Henry Robbins (2019)

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Two things drew me to this movie. The runtime was a brisk 1 hour and 12 minutes. And I thought the title was stupid. But I am glad that I watched it. There really isn’t much to say about this movie, as it is very short and takes on an anthology-style structure with a mild storyline that strings along the bulk of the movie which are throwbacks to 80’s late-night TV shows. The basic premise is, that our lead Ryan (Manson McNulty) receives a home video camera for Christmas, where he mistakenly starts filming his day-to-day life and late-night TV over his parent's wedding tape. And to make it as authentic as possible, they actually filmed everything on VHS and Beta cameras rather than cop out and just use a digital grain and VHS tracking filter. However, I wish the commitment to the visuals were taken through to the TV skits. As these take on a comedic tone parodying all the random and endless later-night programs, some of them hit better than others when it comes to execution. But even though this movie has a quick runtime and mostly consists of gag shorts, the director Jack Henry Robbins still pushed a message they wanted to convey to the audience.

Rather than breaking down the “story”, we’ll touch on the interesting and entertaining part of this film which are the TV segments. They manage to hit everything you would see on TV during that time from infomercials that seem to never end selling the most pointless things, hobbyist-based tutorial shows made on small local networks, at-home workouts and adult entertainment. Most of these were done fairly well, from the perspective of someone that wasn’t even born during this era. The standout segment for me was definitely the Bob Ross parody, Painting with Joan (Kerri Kenney) which progressively gets more absurd until we’re at Sleeping with Joan. Throughout we get some pretty well-known comedic talent such as, Thomas Lennon playing smiling depressed infomercial host, Charlyne Yi hosting a public network music show with her parents as co-hosts, or Mark Proksch who’s describing items on an Anquites show who later has a crossover with Thomas Lennon’s character.

Without going through every sketch that made me laugh, I would recommend this if you’re into the anti-humour you experience on The Eric Andre Show or I Think You Should Leave. That awkward absurdist humour where you’re almost laughing at it from a meta-perspective that someone went this far (although, not all hit like this). One aspect I wish they did a little bit more of would be to show more comedy through the common amateur errors of filmmaking. During a socio-politically aware porn parody segment there are moments of incompetency with boom mics ever so slightly gracing the top of the frame. Or the obvious fake driving where the driver moves his hands off the wheel for elongated periods of time.

However, when the sketches don’t hit, they fall very flat for me. At best, they got a mild chuckle at worst they feel like a Trump-era Saturday Night Live skit. Despite being shot on VHS, the way some of the skits were presented didn’t feel like they came from that era. There is an infomercial for home security that felt like it took place more in the late 90s to 2000s rather than the late 80s. During the basement music sequence, we have multiple camera angles and zooms. Yet I imagine that if someone was hosting that in real life they would have one wide shot (Maybe two if they were wealthy enough) and that would be it. So in their attempts to make skits feel more cinematic, it clashed with the aesthetic. And that’s the same with the audio, when the visuals are graining and off, yet the audio is crisp it forms a disconnection.

I do believe that every piece of art has something to say. It could be a simple message, or complex and layered. Or they might not have any intention to have a message but there will always be something to interpret. In between the skits, we get pieces of Ryan’s day-to-day while getting snippets of his parents' wedding video, where we can determine that it’s a marriage that is on the rocks. One segment with Mona Lee Wylde and Raymond Lee discusses the disconnect between what we see in the moment and what we record and look back on. Talking about a future where we have a camera on us at all times and we only perceive reality through a lens where it will never live up to the feeling you get while you were there. A message about living in the moment is expressed by the Mother (Christian Drerup) saying how despite her husband being lousy on their wedding day, she was happy to be sharing all the sights, smells and sounds with someone.

Although a movie I wouldn’t recommend to my parents to watch, this is something I would happily put on in the background with friends. Tune in during the memorial skits and tune out when the SNL stuff comes on. Nonetheless, it was something that I was pleasantly surprised about. Short, sweet, got a laugh and didn’t feel like a waste of time. If you have nostalgia for a bygone era, I would recommend checking out VHYes.