Frem Here To Awesome Festival
Advertisement

LOL
  • 0
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Rate this movie.

Buy it now on DVD
Starting at $17.79
trailerWatch trailer

Rent it, watch it, find it

Advertisement

Directed by Joe Swanberg.
The constant need to be plugged-in and connected threatens to crash the real life operating system of three technologically obsessed twenty-somethings in director Joe Swanberg's humorous meditation on the relationship between man and machine in modern society. Tim does computer work for a living, but he also lives for his computer. Unfortunately his inability to snap the lid closed on his laptop is rapidly alienating his girlfriend Ada, who recognizes Tim's apparent inability to communicate with other people without the buffer of technology. Meanwhile, as struggling musician Alex obsesses over a girl he met on an adult website, flesh-and-blood girl named Walter does her best to make her attraction to Alex known. Lastly, Chris has transferred from New York to Chicago due to the demands of his job, making a long distance relationship with his east coast girlfriend Greta increasingly difficult to maintain. Though the pair talks constantly on their cell-phones while also sending cell-phone pictures to one and other, neither Chris nor Greta can deny that their reliance on technology in sustaining their relationship is no substitute for the living, breathing warmth of human companionship. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
[more]

Reviews and discussions

Write a review

indieabby88indieabby88 WTF, LOL?
by indieabby88 in Bloggish review blog
hasn't rated it.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. [What do you think?]
"Well, it certainly took me long enough, but I finally got around to watching and reviewing "LOL," Joe Swanberg's movie about the effects of modern technology and relationships. I'd been hearing a lot about the Mumblecore genre, especially since the folks here at Spout have all but canonized Swanberg and his fellow Mumblecore artists as the patron saints of a new generation of filmmakers. I was curious to see how the movie lived up to all the hype. What I found was a movie that, while interesting, didn't really reveal its message until the last possible moment. In fact, up until the last fifteen minutes of the film, I was prepared to write off "LOL" as just another interesting but ultimately failed artistic experiment. The movie is about a group of friends (Swanberg, Kevin Bewersdorf and C. Mason Wells) each going through some relationship issues that have something to do with their addiction to online porn. These guys all seem perfectly normal and good otherwise, but when it comes ... " [More]
joem18bjoem18b Put Down That Frog and Step Awa ...
by joem18b in joem18b Blog
hasn't rated it.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. [What do you think?]
"Before dealing with the end of the world as we know it, which this movie does not explicitly mention but which is lurking there in the unspoken background - before dealing with that, it being a pet peeve of mine, let me mention first an equally annoying pet peeve: many podcasters, the Spout podcasters occasionally among them, use the expression "begs the question" when they actually mean "raises the question." This error of diction has become so common in the U.S. today that it's probably useless to even mention it here, but since I heard it again on FilmCouch recently, let me remind those who might be unaware of it that "begging the question" is a form of logical fallacy in which an argument is assumed to be true without evidence other than the argument itself. Thank you. Meanwhile, back in the day, if you hated documentaries but had to write a paper on one, you could head down to Ninth and Trawler and catch The Nudist Story at the Jewel Box. The Nudist Story is the film where eve ... " [More]
paulpaul FilmCouch #35
by paul in paul on spout.com
liked it.
Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]
"Mumblecore on a hot plate. Karina gets tired of the spitfire debating over Hannah Takes the Stairs and the rest of the mumblecore movies playing at IFC Center this week. Paul and Kevin review LOL (on DVD this week) and Quiet City for all non-new yorkers. FilmCouch #35 Subscribe in the iTunes store (search for “filmcouch” or click here to launch iTunes) and a new free episode will download every Friday. Join the FilmCouch group Hannah takes the Stairs, Quiet City, LOL Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Paul " [More]
paulpaul Mumblecore, Shmumblecore
by paul in paul on spout.com
liked it.
Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]
"I like the films coming from Swanberg, Duplass, Bujalski, et al mentioned in Kristin’s Mumblecore post. Kevin and I watched Joe Swanberg’s new film, Hannah Takes the Stairs at SXSW and I had the same response to it I’ve had to his other films (LOL, Kissing on the Mouth). I didn’t leave the theater riding on one emotion. I left talking about all the brilliant little gems, the pieces that are more relevant in his films than the whole. As Kristin put it, the films are a series moments so acutely portraying people trying to communicate. As far as labeling this family of film–and the friendships growing between the filmmakers–as a “movement.” Well, I bristle at the idea. What is it about coining a movement that (in this case before these filmmakers even reach the age of thirty) we find comforting? Does it somehow validate watching films which individually may confuse us? Now that they’re grouped together, like the French New Wave, are we now able to analyze them? Where as before, we jus ... " [More]
lopezdashlopezdash Connected
by lopezdash in Intersection
liked it.
Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]
"LOL made me take a critical look at myself and the way I use technology in my everday life. My friend Paula refuses to get a Blackberry/Treo even though she would definitely benefit from one. It wasn't until I watched LOL that I understood why. I saw myself in Tim, Chris, and Alex and recognized the silent frustration expressed by my friends when I'm constantly checking my email or texting someone. Paula said she didn't like the idea of constantly being available to the outside world via email or SMS. She had the freedom to turn her cell off, screen calls, or simply say she hadn't checked her email - with a Blackberry this would be almost impossible. Are we more connected because of this technology? Not quite. I may be able to respond to an email from a coworker, but its at the expense of a conversation I'm having with a friend. The film is complemented by a series videoheads performance peices Although I constantly responded email during the movie (and ... " [More]
cspraguecsprague Re:What does "Mumblecore" mean ...
by csprague in Mumblecore
liked it.
"My favorite thing is when I google "Mumblecore" and they ask me "Did you mean Dumbledore?" I don't know why, but it makes me laugh every time.Anyway, I watched LOL this week and I have seen a few of the other films on the mumblemap (that's what I'm calling it from now on). At this point, I feel like a voyer listening in on strangers' tough conversations. These characters aren't really exceptional. They all feel painfully normal; leading lives that could be anyone, anywhere. No one seems incredibly thrilled by their situations, but aren't striving to create change in their context. They all seem like they are surviving or trying to sustain the worlds they have built to provide a sense of satisfaction with life, love and work. I just graduated from college and their story doesn't seem unfamiliar from the lives of my friends and I. A lot of these films seem essentially to be recording life as it's happening, its acting, but its not. Its life as art, wh ... " [More]
cspraguecsprague What does "Mumblecore" mean to ...
by csprague in Mumblecore
liked it.
"The word "mumblecore" gets tossed around quite a bit, but it's been tough nailing down what it actually means. Rumor has it that the directors aren't even very fond of it. Perhaps, it's not the term so much as being lumped together under a specific label. How would you define mumblecore? " [More]
quintquint it's all about the meta
by quint in An inordinate number of peppers
liked it.
Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]
"So, while my computer was busying itself crunching some video in Final Cut, I thought it appropriate to finally get around to watching LOL. I've been putting it off because I was afraid I was going to hate it. I'm sure I'll never see it again, but it came early enough in my Mumblecore experience to warrant my indulgence.I think Mumblecore is a pretty awful term for what this is. It totally misses the fact that it's all about the meta. I felt all the more secure having just enjoyed the pleasures of round tripping a photograph into a transparency projected and painted and back into a photograph to be layered in with the original subject. Meta. That's what it's all about. Everyone has the technology to create and manipulate an artifact all the way back around into another manipulatable artifact ad infinitum. It's fun. What I see in Four Eyed Monsters and LOL is this propensity to play with technology. Also this desire to manipulate our own reflection. We se ... " [More]
joem18bjoem18b LOL
by joem18b in joem18b Blog
hasn't rated it.
Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]
"If I'm in the mood for a Western, I want horses. If I'm in the mood for explosions, I go to a Jerry Bruckheimer or Michael Bay movie. In either case, I don't want, say, Max Von Sydow playing chess with Death in some black-and-white hovel on the rocky shores of Sturnnveggloven. In the same way, if I'm in the mood to watch echo-boomer twenty-somethings filming their friends hanging out with each other in small apartments and on the urban stoop and in the homes and basements of their parents and grandparents, none of whom will ever appear onscreen, then for those of you who haven't seen one such film before, this would be mumblecore.I mention this in case you're confronted with the movie LOL on one of those evenings when you in fact don't want an unscripted little semi-plotless handheld film, but instead crave a Hollywood-du-jour mind-destroying offering like those which are currently available at the Metroplex. No sense wasting a tasty little morsel like ... " [More]
TheWorkingDeadTheWorkingDead Spout Mavens #5: LOL
by TheWorkingDead in TheWorkingDead Blog
disliked it.
Was this review helpful? [Be the first to tell us!]
"It's taken me awhile to write the review for LOL, mainly because I keep trying to think of good things to say about this movie. I'm feeling a bit like the lone dissenter here, the only person out there who didn't love this film. I've gone and read some reviews, and I've read up a bit on this 'mumblecore' movement I keep hearing about, hoping to find some explanation, something to tell me what I was missing. But no, nothing worked. Put me in the 'don't get it' category. That's not to say I don't understand the film itself, I do, it's nothing if not painfully obvious about it's intentions. I just don't understand the growing cult surrounding this and other movies that fall under the mumblecore umbrella. But let's focus on LOL for now. The film follows three friends and their inability to engage people(or, more specifically, women) without the aid of their various technological gadgets. Alex is a musician who seems unable ... " [More]
[More reviews]
 



Community ratings

mavens
Spout mavens
are neutral about it.
most people
Most people
are neutral about it.

Other opinions

schulen
schulen
loved it.
mmok
mmok
loved it.
arincrumley
arincrumley
loved it.
TheWorkingDead
TheWorkingDead
disliked it.
mjasik
mjasik
is not interested.
skylarzook
skylarzook
is not interested.