Fool’s Paradise (2023)
I really wanted to love Fool’s Paradise. Charlie Day is a gem and watching him pay homage such comedy giants as Charlie Chaplin, Harpo Marx, and Peter Sellers in what looked on the surface to be a modern day Hollywood set retelling of Hal Ashby’s Being There is an idea that I really went for. Day is amazing and absolutely lights up the screen every time he’s on it. He’s able to combine the pathos of Chaplin, the zaniness of Harpo Marx, and the naïveté of Sellers’ Chauncey Butler but the film just falls flat in the second half. It also lacks the subtlety of Ashby’s film, choosing instead to bludgeon the audience with a very overly broad satire of Hollywood and celebrity culture, and leaves me longing for the film that could have been.
Part of the problem is that Being There sets Chauncey Butler (actually Chance the Butler) as a simple man who blunders his way up high society with snobbish people who may not be as smart as they think they are by mistaking an illiterate butler as an unorthodox and whimsical genius. The important thing is that the characters aren’t complete morons. It’s the reason that film works. You have a well mannered and charming but dim witted man that ends up through happenstance to end up in the ear of the President of the United States. Here we have a well mannered and charming but dim witted man that ends up meeting characters even dumber than him. There’s no juxtaposition. There’s no straight man. It’s all Lou Costellos with no Bud Abbotts to center it, and that ultimately is what keeps this film from reaching its potential.