Oscar’s

Improvised movies are hard to pull off. It was done to perfection with This Is Spinal Tap right off the bat, but never really done right on the independent film scene. However, Cody Clarke and Chloe Pelletier’s film, Oscar’s, may have unlocked the secret. It’s not Spinal Tap… it’s not even a comedy, but the filmmakers show great discipline in their dramatic tale.

Oscar’s is a faux-documentary. Clarke and Pelletier are documentarians hired by the reclusive Oscar to film a super-secret award ceremony held annually in New York. The award show is so secret that only the winners/nominees are allowed to attend, and until this evening, the ceremony has never been recorded or reported by the media. The gathering was one of rumor, myth, and legend to the general public.

“The award show is so secret that only the winners/nominees are allowed to attend…”

The award ceremony works like this. Each year, the mysterious Oscar emails the winners of his awards and invites them to the secret ceremony. The winners then gather in a room with a table of award statues seated in front of them. One by one, the participants grab an envelope at the table, read the category, and then announce the winner. The winner then stands up and gives an acceptance speech. The process repeats itself until all the awards are handed out. Here’s the rub. The categories are relatively mundane—Best Smile, Best Hug, Best Apology, Best Subway Catch, and with a few risqué categories.

Here’s where Oscar’s gets it right. The vast majority of improvised films are an exercise in forcing actors to humorously monologue and ramble in front of a camera, which is often unfunny and hard to follow. Then the cast is sent on some strange adventure, which is unfunny and unravels into hard-to-watch silliness and buffoonery. You get the sense that all they’re trying to do is make you laugh at all times.