The end result, Martin & Orloff, is a film filled with celebrity cameos, inside jokes, and amazingly bizarre humor. And although this indie-film was released over three years ago in limited run, Anchor Bay has finally done comedy fans a favor and released this great comedy on DVD.


Martin Flam (Ian Roberts) just tried to kill himself. After some stressful events surrounding his job as a corporate costume designer, he slit his wrists and ended up in an insane asylum. Deciding that he can't face his life alone, Martin decides to enter therapy with Dr. Eric Orloff (Matt Walsh). Unfortunately for Martin, Dr. Orloff is himself a little crazy. Dragging Martin around the city, Orloff seems more concerned with ruining Martin's professional and personal life more than he is with helping his depression. Meanwhile, Martin falls for a beautiful stripper (Amy Poehler), tries to keep a war-vet from sleeping with his elderly mother, and attempts to find a way to save three girl scouts dressed as spare ribs.

Much like Anchorman and its ilk, Martin & Orloff is more concerned with the gags than the plot. To go into all the weird twists and turns would really ruin fun of the movie. The film keeps adding characters and situations and ideas that should really weigh it down, but actually keep it fresh and funny throughout. You'd think that suddenly adding oddities such as an obese football star with massive genitals would slow the movie down or make it feel gimmicky. Instead, the film just becomes more and more insane.


Cameos are also a highlight of the film. Fortunately, the film uses comedian cameos to enhance the comedy of the film rather than to show off the filmmakers' famous friends. For example, in one scene Jeneane Garofalo, Tina Fey, and Rachel Dratch play three ladies in a really bad play. While most movies would flaunt the cameo, the filmmakers put the three comediennes in wigs and makeup, allowing a subtler and funnier performance from them.

Then again, a lot of comedy fans might be turned off by the stupid humor. I'm talking jokes about pooping in sinks and hitting on elderly women. The Wes Anderson crowd might look down on the humor in this film as cheap or easy. It's a fair argument; the movie isn't for everyone. The movie also seriously mocks mental illness and suicide, so people with sensitivity in those areas might also be turned off by the content of the film.

But for people who can take a joke and don't mind weirder humor will definitely love this film.

Score: 8 out of 10

The Video
As a low-budget, indie-film, it should come to no one's surprise that Martin & Orloff is an ugly movie. This transfer is filled with little artifacts, a lot of fuzziness in the picture, and way too much color bleeding. The early scenes in Orloff's office are a great example of how bad this disc looks: brick walls in the background appear to be flat, little details in clothing and faces are lost. The following scene where Orloff and Martin are driving down Houston Street, the colors are so bright and bleed so bad that Orloff's body looks almost looks like one of the aliens from Cocoon.

Then again, this is is a really low-budget film, so take these complaints with a grain of sand.

Score: 3 out of 10

The Audio
There are two English audio tracks on this set, a 5.1 Surround and a 2.0 stereo. While you'll obviously want to go with the 5.1, you generally won't notice a huge difference besides some occasional background noise moving around. But with the exception of a few scenes involving crowd noise - mainly two different restaurant sequences - the majority of the audio is front-loaded conversation.

Unfortunately, both tracks offer suffer from a lot of white noise. In most scenes, the combination of music and conversation keep the hiss quiet. But the handful of quieter scenes really reveals an annoying noise in the background. It doesn't ruin the experience, but audiophiles won't rank this as their favorite film.

There are also no subtitles on this disc.

Score: 4 out of 10

The Extras
While this set isn't packed in the traditional sense, everything here is hilarious and well worth your time.

First of all, I want to call attention to the insert that comes with the DVD. On one side are the hilarious track listings. While most movies just list the scenes, Martin & Orloff has great, sarcastic descriptions of each scene.

On the other side of the insert is a small board game, once again tongue-in-cheek. Starting at "Insane," you answer a series of useless trivia questions and confront situations to eventually reach the goal of "Sane."

Dinner Theater Bloopers are a set of funny bloopers with Janeane Garofalo, Tina Fey, and Rachel Dratch from their cameo scene. While this feature's only about two minutes long, the three women are obviously improve geniuses, just ad-libbing some hilarious lines.

The same goes for David Cross' Dan Wasserman Deleted Scenes. In the film, Wasserman is a small character obsessed with getting Orloff's opinion on a play. These scenes involve Wasserman calling Orloff and leaving creepy messages begging him to call back. If you like Cross' stand-up and Mr. Show, you'll definitely get a kick out of this.

Astronaut Striptease At one point in the movie, Martin and Orloff visit a strip club. There's a brief mention of an astronaut stripping and this scene is just that. If you've ever wished that stripper dressed like Neil Armstrong and took it all off, then this is the piece of cinema for you.

Alternate Ending isn't really a changed ending, it's more of a deleted scene. At the end of the movie, one of the characters sings a short song. This is the extended version of it, involving romantic lyrics mashing into a gangster-rap song about fighting in Desert Storm.

The feature commentary with Roberts, Walsh, and director Lawrence Blume is possibly one of the weirdest I've ever heard. While most commentaries go out of their way to inform and explore the filmmaking process, the Martin & Orloff commentary is made to confuse and befuddle. Roberts and Walsh and champions of improvisation, and watching this film, they just spew hilariously exaggerated lines about making the film. They make-up symbolism in the film (a baseball fight turns into a critique of post-Desert Storm oil policy, etc), pretend that extras in the film are celebrities, and talk about sleeping with each others' significant others.

Yeah, it's pretty awesome. The playful ego boasting - "I'm sorry, I only watch my own acting in the film," says one commentator - is simply hilarious and really spoofs many of the more egotistical commentaries we get on DVD. While it's not a particularly informative commentary, this commentary feels like a second movie linked onto the film, like two fictional characters were watching a movie they made and trying to make it sound more impressive than it was.

While almost all of the handful of features are under three minutes, the commentary is funny enough to warrant multiple listens and really fills out the DVD.

Score: 7 out of 10

 

From IGN Capsule Review