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ZERO CHARISMA (Review)

Review by Elizabeth Weitz
Produced by Zac Carlson, Teo Commons,
Thomas Fernandes, Rod Olson, 
 Lindsey Rowles Stephenson, Michael Stephenson, 
Jarrod Thalheimer, Ezra Ventos
Written by Andrew Matthews
Directed by Andrew Matthews and Katie Graham
Starring Sam Eidson, Anne Gee Byrd, 
Brock England, Garrett Graham, Cyndi Williams, 
Vincent Prendergast, Katie Folger

Magic Stone Productions and Shark Films / Not Rated

Sometimes a movie floats to the surface of your periphery and it seems like a great way to kill the hour and a half before Sleepy Hollow comes on. You know, one of those movies you expect to be pleasant, non-threatening and easily digested like a Hot Pocket.

Then you watch it and everything changes.

Things you thought you had buried deep inside you come crawling up from the depths of your memories, calling out in the dry raspy voice of a dessicated vampire, “Remember me, Elizabeth…we used to wear a cape when no one was looking”.   Things that are hard to forget.

Yeah, Zero Charisma is one of those movies.

At first, the premise seems to be rather innocuous: “An overgrown nerd who serves as Game Master of a fantasy board game finds his role as leader of the misfits put into jeopardy when a new initiate enters the group.”

Nothing too revealing in that statement right?  Nothing that would lead you to think that in a short 86 minutes all those deep seeded hurts and fears that were once right on your nerdy kid surface would come oozing back out again (Not that you ever thought that could happen.  I mean you’ve grown up and are so far removed from that era of smelling like a can of spray cheese and grilled onions, that a mere movie couldn’t remind you of how horrible it was back then).

But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

The film stars Sam Eidson as Scott, an overly demanding man-boy who lives at home with his grandmother and spends all of his time designing quests for his gaming buddies (who are seemingly stuck in the same exact head-space as Scott).   When one of the players leaves the game to save his marriage, Scott finds a replacement in Hipster Geek Miles (Garrett Graham) a guy who is the epitome of what nerd culture has become in the last decade or so.
Whereas Scott is your stereotypical dork immersed in a culture that leaves little chance at a life outside it (which seems to be of his own choosing), Miles is the suave and charismatic dabbler who thinks that it would be fun to go full-nerd for a while.  Miles can speak the lingo like a champ (He works for a Geek website called GeekChic), provide nerd answers to nerd questions (Which is faster? the Enterprise or the Millennium Falcon?) and acts like “one of the boys”, but there is still a level of disconnect between him and the rest of the nerd herd here…he’s cool and they are not.

As Miles begins seducing Scott’s small circle of friends away from him (most of whom are in fear of Scott on some level- the man is a maniac when it comes to his game), Scott begins to lose his grip on his own life. Who he is as a human being is literally lived behind the Game Master’s cardboard barricade and once that has been threatened, Scott goes a bit manic.

Of course, it’s difficult to go in depth into Scott’s psyche without giving away too much.  This movie is expertly crafted on Sam Eidson’s performance of Scott and his ability to create a protagonist that is so unlikeable, yet has such a vulnerability,  that it is hard not to root for him even though he is a huge dick (and, I expect, that a lot of that rooting has to do with a certain familiarity that people will see in Scott, be that of a personal nature or someone they used to pal around with back in the day).

It is difficult not to fall in love with Scott, even though you hate him too.

There is a particular moment in the film after Scott has a complete meltdown during a game (which takes place at Miles’ hip pad- again, evidence that the game is being co-opted by him) and is caught cheating in order to bring Miles down a peg.  As each and everyone of his friends (including his best mench Wayne- played fantastically by Brock England) turn from him to bathe in the glory of Nerd King Miles, a deeply hurt and rage-filled Scott tells each of his former buddies, “When he (Miles) is done with his experiment, don’t even think of coming back to me.”

It is here that you realize what the movie really is about and why it can affect you in the way that it does.

If you happen to have come of age during the ’70s/early ’80s, nerd culture was not the super-cute darling that it is today.  Kids got beat up for liking comic books, or RPGs, or actively participating in an activity that was deemed beneath the mainstream. You were called out for being a dork often (if not daily) and learned quickly to disconnect from a whole lotta people.  Those who were like you, you clung to.  They became your touchstone.  You could talk about your passions openly, search out information on favorite comic artists, movies and books together (remember, this was before the Internet) and simply be yourself.

You were, on some level Scott.

And then, all of a sudden, the things you loved the most were, in a way, taken from you (maybe not intentionally but it still felt like that) by a new culture, one that claimed fandom, but who didn’t have to pay their dues like you did.  It became easy to find out the minor characters of DC and Marvel, easy to search out archaic facts about The Last Starfighter, easy to do/find/participate in anything.

Your nemesis became like Miles.

They might have liked the stuff you did, but you weren’t ever going to be invited to the party.

And yes, that metaphorical party I just mentioned was, in fact in the movie and filled to the brim with all the Hipster Nerds who are just a bit too cool.

Now, like most movie formulas you’d expect that there would be a confrontation between the Hero (Scott) and the Villain (Miles) and it would unfurl in a way that would redeem the Hero in the eyes of those who witness his epic battle.  And you wouldn’t be wrong, there is. But this movie is steeped in a bit more realism than you’d expect and the battle doesn’t go as planned (does it ever in reality?).

But that’s not the point.

The point comes after the battle, after everything is over and the Hero doesn’t learn his lesson, doesn’t see the silver lining, doesn’t exactly grow as a human being…because it’s rare that we actually do any of these things and that’s what makes Zero Charisma an incredibly moving, difficult and yes, even sappy film.

Sometimes we step in a lot of shit but the beauty part comes from scraping it off your shoe and moving on.

And maybe, even staring a new game.

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