"Brazzaville Teen-Ager" is an American 20-minute live action short film from 2013, so this one has its 5th anniversary this year and here we got another relatively short movie in which Michael Cera is starring in and he has shown up for quite a few of these recently. He is also the director and part of the writers team here. It is basically a father-son story and it delivers the same shot at awkward comedy as you will find in every other Cera film, long or short. But there is maybe more drama in here than usual for the actor, even one scene where Cera goes all in tears-wise, but the really sad thing is that neither comedy nor drama feel authentic and neither is working as much as I hoped it would. And then there is the problem that Cera is really no particularly gifted actor and the script here just cannot make up for the fact that once again he is playing the exact same character in every movie. The music is not helping either and the incredibly random inclusion of singer Kelis playing herself just adds to the fact that you never have the impression that you are watching actual characters here and not actors giving mediocre performances for these characters. Admittedly the senior actors were a bit better here, but not good enough either to make up for the slow motion scene at the recording studio for example. What was that seriously? Was that supposed to be funny. This film here gets a thumbs-down from me and even if it was relatively short already, it could have been even shorter, maybe should have, for all I care. Don't watch.
Review of Brazzaville Teen-Ager
