Evergreen Forty When Lee Kirk, known to a wide audience on the TV series “The Office”, represented “Ordinary World” in April of this year at the festival “Tribeka”, the tape had another name – “Old Man”. Kirk explores the theme of whether punks can survive in their fifth decade or whether family, children, mortgages, and trash are more important. Billy Joe Armstrong of the popular punk trio Green Day received in the “Ordinary World” residence for the main role and regularly attended several months of acting courses. Armstrong is the same age as his on-screen hero and by no means the embodiment of the motto “live fast – die young”. Contemplation of “Ordinary World” introduces not to a personal drama about the acquisition of a talented musician of a second breath, it is rather a tragicomedy with cranberry elements of the sitcom and a claim to continue in the form of a reality show like “The Osborne Family”.
In the story, Perry is the leader of a club punk band popular once, in the 90s, for Armstrong, all this is more than familiar. Unlike Green Day, Perry and his friends did not become big rock stars. Rock 'n' roll stayed in the past decade, with the current former star quite established as Mr. Mother of Two in the morning and afternoon as a not-too-responsible employee of a large hardware store. Perry owns a shop in half with his younger brother, looks like a slightly aged teenage boy and lives in a continuous groundhog bottom. Forgetting to add, he has prepared a personal revolt for his 40th birthday and is ready to come out of creative stagnation.
Expand the story of “Ordinary World” Lee Kirk, as well as the writer of the script towards the possible musical return of Perry as a talented songwriter, you look and there would be an interesting vivid drama about the fact that it is never too late in this life. But Kirk is much nicer than the predictable squealing with a 40-year-old parody of punk, it is much more important to put glasses on a tray, almost in time for a performance at a talent evening of his own daughter. For all the actions of Perry in this tape, the layman will twist his finger at the temple: whether it is a party in a chic room with cheap beer and collectible whiskey, an attempt to throw a TV out the window and breaking a guitar. Strangely, Armstrong is interested in playing a loser, he is perhaps the only one in this tape who demonstrates an excellent acting, he manages a type who burns through his life and lives by the illusions of the past. Gary (Fred Armisen, “Portland”, “Saturday Night Live”) does not add proper laughter to the situation as Perry’s old bandmate, Christie (Judy Greer, “Archer”, “Mad Love”), the former girlfriend of the hero, does not go beyond any limits, too, except as lying down in the old-fashioned way.
The problem with The Ordinary World is the truth of its story, which slickly, clumsily, but surely shows that all those who rebelled in their youth become boring conservatives and bearers of traditional values. And the problems are the same – an infantile husband, terribly creative and not bringing money to the house, and a lawyer wife in the civil service Karen (Selma Blair, “Cruel Games”, “Feast of Love”), ready to understand and forgive. You have two kids, no, three, and you too. With his film, Kirk as the author and Armstrong as his bait-face turn not to teenagers, but to the same peers from 35+5+5, in order to show that family is for life and peace of mind, and rock-no-roll – so, for youth and ageless idiots. And not a single almost reel in the frame, only the reincarnation of Joan Jett.
6 out of 10