Bumblefuck, USA

Bumblefuck, USA is a deeply shallow movie. I could compare it to a puddle. But puddles actually have cool shit going on at a microscopic level. No matter how close you look at Bumblefuck, USA, it’s not interesting.

Bumblefuck, USA opens with a gay man named Matt committing suicide. Distraught by this, Matt’s Dutch friend, Alexa travels to the town where Matt lived and died. She decides to channel her grief into a documentary. Alexa begins interviewing town residents about their experiences with homosexuality in this environment. She also has her own gay experience with a woman named Jennifer. This adds an even deeper personal connection to Alexa’s documentary.

I can think of at least two other movies that do the same thing Bumblefuck, USA does. The Ring Thing and Elena Undone also mix narrative framework with documentary inserts. In all three cases, I’ve found the documentary element to be stronger. Certainly in Bumblefuck, USA the documentary element is stronger. The framework is a very personal documentary made for a very personal reason. Adding an additional lens of it being a fictional framework creates a lot of distance. It feels like the film is unsure which medium would best get their point across. So, they chose to do both. It’s a bad decision. They should’ve gone full documentary. The narrative stuff is weaker.

The narrative elements of Bumblefuck, USA are incredibly easy to ignore. The documentary stuff is boring too, but at least it feels real. The fictional stuff feels not just fictional but deeply shallow. Alexa and everyone else in the cast is boring. Their experiences with homosexuality and homophobia are extremely surface level. There’s nothing in the plot I haven’t seen numerous times before and almost always done better.

Also, the documentary elements talk a lot about external pressures from straight people and institutions. But Bumblefuck, USA has very few non-queer cast members. There’s also very few extras. I’m sure this is a budget problem. But it gives the film an almost post-apocalyptic feel. The infrastructure of the past world clearly exists, but there’s a scarce population. And that population seems majority queer. A population made up primarily of queer people. While a gay post apocalypse is a super cool idea, it doesn’t help this movie. Descriptions of homophobia ring hollow in the environment the film has created. Bumblefuck, USA doesn’t show many scenes of homophobia on a systemic or even personal level.

And then, after all of this dead boring stuff, there’s a rape scene. I have no good will towards this scene. I thought it was a deeply unnecessary attempt to add conflict into this shallow movie. That’s not nearly a good enough reason to add a rape scene to your movie. And then after it happens, that’s kind of it! The film drags on another 20 minutes. But there’s no follow-up scenes of Alexa dealing with this trauma. It just goes back to her wandering around and tying up her relationship with Jennifer. It’s bad!

Bumblefuck, USA is a deeply boring film punctuated by a needless rape scene. The film is either unclear on its identity or failed in its execution. It’s not a successful film on any level.

Overall rating: 2.5/10

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