The plot: Polish-born Jan Lewan (Jack Black) is a polka
bandleader with quite the following in his home of Pennsylvania. In fact, his
fans believe in him so much that they are willing to invest thousands of
dollars into his numerous business, not the least of which being his music.
However, it seems that his business dealings aren’t entirely on the up-and-up,
as he soon finds himself under investigation for financial fraud. Will Jan have
to face his actions or will he go on to take the stage once again?
The supporting cast here is very solid. Jenny
Slate fills out her role as the dutiful wife with the right amount of charm and
chemistry, but she also does quite well at showing how the fame surrounding her
and her husband are affecting her, like her sudden on-stage rant about how it
feels to be Mrs. Jan Lewan. Jason Schwartzman as Jan’s right-hand man rolls
with the dramatic punches he’s given, and even if he comes across as a little too easy to convince one way or another,
he certainly makes his stage name of Mickey Pizzazz feel warranted.
Jacki Weaver is an absolute riot as Marla’s constantly
pessimistic mother, channelling so much shrillness into the role that not only
does she make the idea of siding with an admitted criminal rather easy, but she
never makes it seem like she exists solely as a roadblock everyone else has to
get around. She is voicing very real concerns, albeit in a very confrontational
manner, and seeing her be the rather emphatic voice of reason results in quite
a few chuckles. Robert Capron as Jan and Marla’s son David makes for some nice
exchanges with Jack Black, J. B. Smoove as a government agent investigating
Jan’s finances works well as a look at the more legal side of the story, and
Vanessa Bayer as the polka band’s resident bear leaves a far greater impression
that I would have guessed just from that character description.
And then there’s Jack Black in the lead role, and it’s here
where pretty much ALL of the reasons to watch this movie reside. His history in
musical comedy off the back of his work with Tenacious D serves him well here
as he imbues the character with a seriously infectious energy that makes the
performance scenes really pop. However, that is only part of the puzzle; as
good as the music is, combining the real Jan Lewan’s own arrangements with some
pretty solid compositions from Theodore Shapiro, it’s his character performance
that makes it work as well as it does here.
Following in the footsteps of films like Masterminds, which
took a similarly comedic look at a real-life crime story, the way he manages to
get the audience on his side right from the start and even keep them there is
quite admirable. He conveys so much dimension within the role, giving real
weight to his discussions about how much the work means to him and how this
great land he lives in gave him an opportunity to make his mark. He comes
across less like a malicious crook who just wanted to fleece elderly couples
for their savings and more like an ambitious worker who got in way over his
head. Kind of hard not to feel sorry for him, as deserving of his sentence as
he is.
This is aided by the solid script at the heart of all this,
which is rather surprising considering last time we checked in with
husband-and-wife screenwriting team Wallace Wolodarsky and Maya Forbes (the
latter of whom is also the director), we got the impossibly saccharine A Dog’s Purpose. Not to say that this film doesn’t get overly sentimental at times,
since that is basically the entire tone of the piece where it concerns the title
character, but here, it feels warranted. Partly because of Jack Black’s
brilliant performance, but also because these writers had enough sense to look
into Jan’s own ambitions and try to get at the core of what made them manifest.
This is where we get into discussions about the American
Dream, and for a nice change of pace, this film actually does it in a way that
interests me. It takes Jan’s place as a European migrant and uses that as the hook for the American Dream
to enter the picture, highlighting how while that very dream tends to leave
most people cold, it still draws people in… and not just the locals. Hell, over
here in Australia, I got taught rigorously about the Dream in high school and
was explicitly told not to believe it. Given how much Jan finds himself swept
up in the frenzy of fame in this film, I’m starting to realise why exactly that
lesson was taught in the first place.
So, what about the true crime aspect of the story? I mean ‘The Man Who Would Be Polka King’,
the documentary this film is based on, is
incredibly dry, so maybe this dramatisation can give a pathos shot in the arm
to the story. Well, it kinda does, in
that largely skims over the hard numbers involved. We get the sense that
everything isn’t on the up and up, but at the same time, we’re not bogged down
in economic jargon to try and explain why what he is doing is wrong. It works
out fairly well, since it means that we get more time dedicated to the
reactions Jan Lewan gives of what he is doing and his fears of getting caught,
but it also means that this ends up downplaying the fact that Jan Lewan pulled
a fast one on his investors.
It even reaches a point where the film takes time out to
berate the people who fell for the scheme, since it’s not as if Jan twisted
their arms to invest to begin with. Granted, this comes as a result of a rather
grim bit of misanthropy connected to an injury Jan got while in prison (an
injury that actually helped in the real story), but at the same time, this film
ends up struggling with its own moral grey areas. Stories based on true crimes
end up highlighting the perpetrator over the victims, but at least, it’s
usually done with the notion the perpetrator is most definitely in the wrong
and the victims were indeed victims. Here, between the sympathy shown towards
Jack Black as Jan and the way the details are handled, this ends up going down
a less-than-ideal route, and the film ends up suffering… well, not by much, but
it does result in a rather flawed production.
All in all, this is a pretty entertaining, if incredibly
light, feature. The acting is excellent, with Jack Black absolutely shining as
our weirdly complex and likeable lead, the music is catchy and used within the
narrative quite nicely, and while the writing may shy away from the hard facts
of the story a little too much to be completely on-side, it still shows enough
understanding of the effects of fame and chasing dreams to make Jan Lewan out
to more a tragic figure than an outright villain. Not so sure if his real-life
investors would agree with that assertion, but for what it’s worth, it was a
fun ride.
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