It’s been a couple of years since two-time academy award nominee Joaquin Phoenix renounced acting, gained forty pounds, grew a face-engulfing beard that makes him look like Zach Galifianakis after a three-day bender and began to pursue a career as a rapper. To pile crazy on top of bizarre, Phoenix’s friend/collaborator/brother-in-law, Casey Affleck, started following him around with a camera to document his rise to hip hop fame but instead captured endless footage of JP (that’s his rapper name) losing his mind. The result of the fiasco is the new film “I’m Still Here” that serves as proof of Phoenix’s slide into madness. Or so Affleck and JP would have hoped. The validity of the project has been suspect from day one and the nagging question that pre-occupies the mind while enduring this excuse for a documentary is simple: Is it real? And having contemplated all the material and facts presented it seems the glaring answer is another question itself. Who cares?
To attempt the standard structure for a review and present a nice and tidy synopsis at this point is near impossible. All has pretty much been revealed already. Joaquin Phoenix quits acting. Then he tries to be a rapper. He isn’t good at it. He tries to meet with Sean “P. Diddy” Combs to discuss the possibility of joining forces to create an album. He isn’t good at that either. He’s late for meetings and misses phone calls and much time is spent waiting in hotel rooms. Once they do occupy the same space together, Puffy verifies the obvious; the rapping is horrible. There is some drug use and hookers and a little bit of defecating but the majority of the movie is Phoenix yelling and ranting about himself and how those around him directly affect him.
(Terrible Drinking Game Idea: Take a shot every time JP utters a sentence that DOESN’T include the words “I,” “me” or “my”. You could make it through the film’s 108 minute running time and not taste a drop.)
Both Phoenix and Affleck share a “written by” credit for the film. Something unheard of in legitimate documentaries because these films are supposed to be spontaneous and natural. I’m Still Here is filled with false moments and almost every aspect feels staged and preconceived. It rings about as true as any episode of the “Jersey Shore” or “The Hills” and would have been better suited as one hour special on MTV wedged in between repeats of “Jackass”. Various celebrities show up and only add fallacy by playing too much to the camera and nearly smirking into the face of what is suppose to be a lost soul on the verge of breaking down completely. Why Affleck would sit back and exploit his friend’s mental demise by sitting idly by and filming it makes no sense.
Authentic or not, “I’m Still Here” is a tremendous bore of a movie that goes nowhere. Amateurish and maundering, there really isn’t enough here to constitute a feature film. Directed by Affleck, the film suffers from a lack of any tension and spends its time following an actor who doesn’t have anything to say. Both Phoenix and Affleck have worked with art house auteur, Gus Van Zant, and there are moments in the film that are pulled directly from his style of filmmaking. When Van Zant fixes his camera on someone walking aimlessly through a landscape it can be thought provoking (“Gerry,” “Elephant”). When Affleck does it, it is yawn inspiring.
It could be argued that “I’m Still Here” is an experimental performance art piece that exists to poke at celebrity ego and grotesque behavior. A sort of Andy Kaufman fused with Sacha Baron Cohen parodying Brando and Crowe. That might be true but Affleck and Phoenix keep their cards so close to their chest that they never let us in on the joke. What is left is a vanity project that neither enlightens or entertains.
