MTV Flick Grows Old Quick

directed by John Payson starring Jerry O'Connell playing on MTV

Clocking in at less than 90 minutes in length, "Joe's Apartment" should easily fall within range of MTV-era attention spans, but predictably delivers nothing more substantial than its premise promises. Based upon a short film and presented as MTV's first feature presentation, the movie eventually wears thin, revolving as it does around what is ultimately a sight gag that updates "Alvin and the Chipmunks."

The Joe (Jerry O'Connell) who lends his name to the increasingly inaccurate title is an Iowa boy trying to make it in a decidedly bad New York City, where violence is so rampant that the population number falls before our eyes. In perhaps the most implausible sequence even of this movie, he lands a rent-controlled--and roach-controlled--apartment. Joe then spends his time split unevenly between getting a job and fighting off his militant, singing infestation. Then the country-folk-meets-city-folk story quickly gets on an even simpler track when Joe sees his dream girl, Lily (Megan Ward). Golden-haired and slo-mo, she tends a garden niche and hopes to convert a local lot into Eden before her senator father (Robert Vaughn) makes it a prison Hell.

With the help of hundreds of both computer-animated and real roaches--none of whom, unfortunately, were harmed in the making of the film--director John Payson zips us quickly from one six-legged musical number to another. In between, comedy both broad and cynical provides filler of wildly varying quality: both toilet humor (literally: Joe works for a urinal cake company and woos Lily with fertilizer) and toilet humor with a difference (a musical band named for what it sounds like).

But it doesn't take a genius to figure out that MTV cannot keep us entertained by watching anthropomorphized critters sing--that's Disney's job--and the video magnate has obvious trouble even evoking the fast-forward whatever world of music and meat that it has created for adolescents the world over.

Add to this the movie's short-film origins, wherein the director can inflict such goofy ideas upon us only for so long, and movie becomes a dull, mindless exercise. And the tiny stars that should liven things up?

Irritating. Endlessly irritating. The increasingly unintelligible, high-pitched whine of these wretched bugs cavorting in toilets and a jock strap is enough to cure anyone complaining of sanity. Sure, a barber shop quartet starring disease-carrying vermin rates high on anyone's cuteness scale, but after a funk number, or a gospel number, or the film's opening chorus...one just wants to crawl under a carpet and take a quiet nap.

Other times, the roaches provide witty commentary and do instantly appealing things like watch roach porn on roach public access or pour on to Lily's head on the Big Date night. One other roach public television show, "Charlie Roach," shows a glimpse at the movie's higher comic potential, as does some poking fun at the weird-artist stereotype. Otherwise, the jokes simply aren't consistently good enough to hold up the pillowy filler between Joe's episodic job-hunting and Lily-hunting troubles.

The roaches therefore spend their time making often incomprehensible wise-cracks from under any object in Joe's nightmarishly filthy apartment that could be animated: false teeth, toast, lampshades etc. Payson's philosophy seems to have been to keep things moving, literally, at any cost.

The movie regrettably has several darker, nastier moments that cannot pass unmentioned. At one point two thugs try to kill an inconvenient tenant, a babushka-clad elderly woman, by pushing her down the stairs: we see her crash painfully down to the sound of goofy music. A few roaches rely upon annoying, boring ethnic stereotype voices; these are supposedly swept up in the broad strokes of roach world.

And finally, one might easily forget about the humans, who are hindered by many stretches of painfully bland dialogue of the move-the-plot sort, as if the writers were fearful of departing from the formulaic awkwardness of courtship. O'Connell as Joe gamely spends his time undergoing the gags tossed at him throughout the movie, but usually sounds even more stilted than this one-trick-bug of a movie allows. Ward's Lily isn't given much to do but be pursued, compliment Joe and act nobly.

Two highlights among the human ranks come from the minor characters. Jim Turner captures the self-assured, wild-eyed eccentricity of the imaginary crazy artist mold the movie creates. And Robert Vaughn has a broad, amusing turn as Lily's cross-dressing senator father: he asks her where she bought her earrings, and it is a split second before we remember why.

"Joe's Apartment" has the look and feel of a short film stretched out to feature length and therefore cannot sustain the audience's interest: the writers simply didn't work hard enough at filling in the gaps. The roaches--they are the flying variety, for all you critter hobbyists--become boring for all the variety of the music.

Perhaps if MTV had sunk its teeth into things and put the whole film through the quick-cut music-video grinder, at least they could be seen to stand by their principles. Otherwise, "Joe's Apartment" fails, despite however millions of years its stars have survived. Wait for stars even lower in the march of evolution: Beavis and Butthead.