Unbearable comedy Great World of Sound believes itself to be anything but

Great World of Sound tells the story of two would-be record company A&R men, Martin (sympathetically played by Pat Healy) and his cohort Clarence (caricatured by Kene Holliday), who find themselves “scouting talent” for the dubious Great World of Sound record label. Great World of Sound is actually a fly-by-night scam, a kind of pyramid scheme, and Martin and Clarence are both its unwitting conmen and its marks. They travel from town to town doing their bosses’ dirty work, auditioning aspiring musicians out of budget motel rooms and convincing them to part with a few thousand dollars for recording costs.

The scheme is two scams in one, and both are predicated by a distinctly American sense of entitlement: Martin and Clarence imagine themselves music industry executives, the people they audition fancy themselves stars, everyone dreams of quitting their day jobs, and only the scam’s originators get rich. It’s called “song sharking,” and it was the occupation of director Craig Zobel’s father for a time in the ’70s.

But this movie is neither a farce of the music industry or a revealing examination of an old con. Rather, it’s an unbearably plodding odd-couple comedy. Scene after tedious scene of bad auditions—using real-life respondents to newspaper ads placed by Zobel’s production and improvisation from the actors—are meant to evoke the schadenfreude of watching American Idol rejects but have none of that show’s slick car-wreck appeal. The film’s half-narrative, half-verité style fails on both counts, lending the film neither the weight of a documentary nor the pace, arc, or quality of dialogue one expects from a fully scripted film.

At best, Great World of Sound is like its subjects—deluded, wishing to be something better and more artful than it is capable of. At worst, it’s more like the film’s “song sharking”—a rip-off.

GREAT WORLD OF SOUND DIR. CRAIG ZOBEL | RATED R | AT SELECT THEATERS

Tags: Film, great world of sound