I had no idea what the term "mumblecore" meant before I saw this movie. I had a general idea--the type of stuff that is seen frequently on IFC and is worshipped in smaller circles but would never last two seconds in the fleeting interest of the mainstream (or even the very fringe of it). This movie cemented what it means to be completely meaningless in my brain.
The plotline: Two young whipper-snappers (Kentucker Audley and Tim Morton) live together in Memphis and do absolutely nothing all day, except Kentucker Audley has a job at a sporting goods store that his mom's boyfriend owns. However, he soon quits that job to "pursue...uhm...other things", such as spending more time around the kiddy pool in his front yard. Or, possibly, playing the guitar and singing. He and his roommate soon meet girls, they fall for them, and then get screwed over and realize that they're going to move.
Everything else is white-noise.
It has the picture quality of a home-made movie (which it basically is) but the actors are all surprisingly convincing. Kentucker Audley is excellent, but one gets the feeling that he is portraying himself onscreen, as are all of the other characters. It doesn't take much ability to mumble repetitive and brain-fried lines, but towards the end of the film where actual emotions are shown for the first time, Audley and co-star Tim Morton show commendable skill in bringing a small sense of longing and sadness to their heartbroken characters. The other characters don't have very much screen time, except for possibly Kentucker's fling, who does a respectable job.
The film's meaninglessness is its only strong point--it's just a story, a parable about the ethics of doing absolutely nothing. It's when the resemblance of a plot develops that the film sputters and loses its blissful sense of nothingness. In the first half of the movie, almost no expressions (not even laughter) are shown any of the character's faces, besides a well-acted portrayal of Kentucker's mom's boyfriend, who is an obnoxiously upbeat type, the kind that angers even the most calm of slackers. Luckily, Kentucker IS the most calm (or heavily sedated--it's never specified) of slackers, and he just gets rid of his presence in the simplest of ways--he quits his job, in which the boyfriend is his boss. However, it's when a sense of sadness acutally enters the facial expressions of the characters that something is lost in the movie. The viewer feels the intentionally melancholy nature of the film, with its meandering players and overly stressed mediocrity; but the film breaks that artful barrier when the viewer begins to actually see this realization on the character's faces.
As I mentioned before, the actors do a good job, even when they actually have to act. The subplots of Kentucker's parents, obviously divorced, are pretty run-of-the-mill, and the film seems to be imposing too much on itself--meaning that it is not so whimsical, not quite so enchantingly pointless. The best scenes are the ones that show complete vacuity, and some of them are actually pretty beautiful, such as a scene where Kentucker wanders through a bug-ridden meadow, sipping a cup of coffee (most likely containing whisky as well) and looking vacantly at his surroundings. Kentucker sees nothing in it, and neither does the viewer. And that's strangely comforting.
The film's not necessarily original. I was constantly reminded of Stranger Than Paradise, with its completely inactive characters and artfully aimless dialogue. What makes STP so much better is that the character interactions are far more meticulously rendered, and the improvisation of Jarmush's characters brings an originality and unpredictability to the seemingly senseless exchanges. STP is also one of the most wonderfully shot films I have ever seen, with its rambling black and white photography perfectly capturing the foreign atmosphere of an American landscape. Team Picture is shot with the home-grown feeling of 'been there, done that' and does not dwell on the romanticism and artistic possibilties of aimlessness; which is fresh in a way, but also somewhat disappointing.
I guess an opinion on Team Picture really depends on what you would define artfulness as; I would still consider Team Picture to be an adreftly intriguing film, but it fails to reach a level even close to previous efforts in similar subjects. It is just not a particularly profound, and it's just not a very strong movie, despite an obviously noble effort by Kentucker Audley.
Recommendations: The far superior Stranger Than Paradise, and now that I think about it, it's thematically similar to Kicking and Screaming, just minus the intellectuals.