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Take a good-sized helping of Monty Python. Toss in a handful of Eddie Izzard (he is quite a handful), then mix in some Woody Allen and add a dash of Waiting for Godot. And thus you have a pretty good idea of the type of humor and structure of Identity Burglars. Random sketches are connected by quotes from the likes of Rodney Dangerfield, Hunter S. Thompson, Woody Allen, and Anonymous; there is no particular overarching theme to the sketches, and they most bear a resemblance to half-planned / half-adlibbed stream-of-conscious Monty Python skits.
There are several major sketches in the film: The Russian Bus Safety Video; Lehigh Valley Stevenson, a love-letter-writer-for-hire who has set up shop in front of the Edgar Allen Poe house; the Detector, who walks around with a metal detector looking for… well, we’re not exactly sure; Albert Finch, an agoraphobic artist who’s being interviewed for a local television program; a moody marathon supporter; the aspiring novelist from Texas; Kurt Lechanceleroy, an amateur hockey player who has to do an instructional history video as Community Service for a DUI charge; a young woman who works on her dialogue before responding to a personal ad in the paper; Russian tourists (not the same Russians from before) have fun while touring a submarine; two friends take turns recording various messages on their answering machine; and the return of the Detector. There are several smaller skits between these longer ones, many of which feature Zeus and Bacchus, who link some of the sketches together.
Content
It’s difficult to summarize the content of a film that… well, defies summarization. You have to have a certain sense of humor to appreciate this film. Having watched every episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, I can say that that is what this film is most similar to. However, many of the Flying Circus episodes had some kind of coherent theme –however vague—to tie the major sketches together (e.g. “You’re No Fun Anymore”, “The Spanish Inquisition”, etc.) And, like Flying Circus, there are some skits that you will like, some that you’ll probably think aren’t so funny, and some that will have you laughing out loud.
Personally, I felt that some of the sketches went on for too long, specifically the Moody Marathon Supporter and the Detector segments. After awhile, they got a bit too rambly and seemed to drag on beyond what they probably should have. Many of the skits are simple but creative –such as Lehigh Valley Stevenson and the Answering Machine Messages—and quite funny. Others, like the Russian Bus Safety Video, are long but stay funny pretty much throughout. And the acting talents of Christopher Keener and Adam Remich were varied, but excellently done.
More or less, it’s a hit-or-miss with the different material presented in the film. If you like Python-esque humor, you’ll most likely enjoy many of the sketches, but will find some less humorous than others. I personally found a scene where the two main actors are sitting in a frat house recording different comedic voice messages to be hilarious, while my husband was only mildly amused. It all really depends on your personal taste in comedy.
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