PLOT: Nearing sixty, Phil (Woody Harrelson) has decided to take a trip to Paris with his thirty-two-year-old daughter, Madeleine (Kristen Stewart). Yet, a meddlesome hotel employee (Charlotte Le Bon), Paris protests, and his inexplicably expanding girth hamper those plans.
REVIEW: When you watch a Quentin Dupieux film, you have to make some allowances. A master of the absurd, he’s been making these kinds of comedies for twenty years and is a cottage industry unto himself in France. In Full Phil, he works with his most high-profile cast to date, but anyone expecting anything even remotely conventional ought to keep those expectations in check. Once again, he’s doing his own thing, and if his previous work hasn’t been for you, you’ll want to stay away.
Truth be told, even as far as his movies go, Full Phil is somewhat tedious, if not uninteresting. The premise revolves around Harrelson’s harried industrialist, who wants to reconnect with his daughter but cannot keep his emotions in check, with him irritated by his daughter’s reluctance to stick to her own side of their huge, opulent Paris suite, with her preoccupied by a never-ending series of orders from room service and a fifties monster movie she can’t stop watching.
One of the things everyone will talk about if they check this out is the fact that Kristen Stewart’s character literally never stops eating. Virtually every time the camera is on her, she’s either in the process of eating something or about to eat it — unless she’s drinking wine. As she eats, it’s Phil’s girth that starts to abnormally expand, fueling his paranoia. As if things weren’t bad enough, he’s constantly being spied on by a hotel employee (Charlotte Le Bon) who is convinced he’s secretly an abuser (he’s not) and is also increasingly fixated on his obviously unhappy daughter, who’s too busy eating to notice.
Harrelson and Stewart seem to be having a blast, but the one-joke premise wears thin fast. The metaphor is laid on thick, with Phil unable to hold in his emotions to the point that he literally might explode, with Harrelson playing him as so neurotic he’s too embarrassed to even report a clogged toilet (thanks to his daughter) to room service. Stewart is funny as the bratty daughter, who gorges herself to an extent rarely seen on film — but as usual, she makes it look cool rather than grotesque (even if it must have been grueling to shoot). Le Bon is also fun as the overly inquisitive hotel employee, with her having the right kind of vibe for a Dupieux film.
While the movie is mostly an okay watch when it focuses on the Paris portion, a huge chunk of the movie is devoted to the film-within-the-film: the fifties monster movie Madeleine is obsessed with. The movie she’s watching stars Tim & Eric (Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim) as two scientists dissecting a fish-man whose victims include a cameoing Emma Mackey (who nonetheless receives prominent billing). These scenes are very much in the vein of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, with their kind of humor clearly striking a chord with Dupieux (and vice versa), but these lengthy sequences are tedious.
At seventy-eight minutes, with those lengthy Tim & Eric scenes included, Full Phil feels less like a real movie and more like a short film that was dragged out to feature length. While it has its moments, mostly thanks to its always-game stars, it feels a little too tossed off to recommend. Had it been a short, it would have probably been solid, but even at its current scant running time, it tests one’s patience more often than not.