The Handmade Character

I would like to say this movie reflects more than Ben Rice's growing skill with 3dmm. And I'd like to say The Handmade Character is a good film. But I can only grant that one of these statements is true, and I say that mildly. The Handmade Character is not a good film, although Ben Rice shows a display of gentle understanding of a plot. Unfortunately this crucial fact alone does not redeem a bad film.

The Handmade Character had a good thing going for it. And that was before it was made: Before a script had been written. When Ben Rice came up with the concept: of a HMC entering a default world. Yes it’s been done, but the idea was there. Then it all goes downhill. Rather than using the famous HMC cameos to his advantage, Rice sub lines this as a cheap gimmick and instead focuses solely on the absolutely futile frolics of a new creation. As a result the other HMCs are forced into a position of carrying the HMC dimension’s weight themselves, and Rice gives them little or no time at all to do this successfully. He gives the whole film a sense of a disjointed rehash of a now tired idea, and that’s where the film suffers the most. The film lacks a centre of any kind, the fuel without the engine.

It’s a shame that while some of my later gripes demonstrate that Rice can at least learn the basic skills of narrative and characterization, nothing can save the appalling pace and lack of actual structure. Fading scenes, badly timed (and cutting out) music: and an absolutely pointless opening sequence that curiously seems present purely to make the credits unnecessarily more interesting, and to justify the use of music. The direction uses panning straight angles and often flat textured sets to excuse the lack of logistics of the scene’s construction (at what point was the sky at a 90 degree angle with the clouds?). One of the more dramatic examples of this careless structure and can be cited in the HMC’s last monologue. What’s painstaking about this is that the HMC rants on tearfully about his home world: the so-called beauty and awe of this cosmos, but at no point does Rice actually attempt to visit this expansively – abruptly letting a few daft and all too brief shots of environmental landscape, with the occasional HMC standing completely still with useless panning giving you the impression of skill. This proves little more than a naïve misunderstanding of where the tension is supposed to be coming from. What could have served as the film’s crucial underpinning becomes little more than crap cuts of directionless exposition, and in the case of the film’s final monologue, only to validate the HMC’s explanation of the dimension.

However much he tried, Rice is failing to convince his audience, but what’s worse is that the direction isn’t the main culprit. It’s the main character that addresses the film’s most poignant flaw. With a film so devoted to the journey and intrigue of one character, it’s probably a good idea to make this character a divine presence whenever he’s onscreen: embraced by the audience and the other characters. Sadly this is not the case. The Handmade Character in question is so irritating, often to a whiny stage of disenfranchisement that it’s incredibly difficult to like him, or indeed care about what happens to him eventually. Not only that but Rice fails to deliver any logical notion of characterization, this placid and fairly dull HMC jumping from a meaningless stage of anger and mistreatment of everyone around him to a tearful plea to return home as a means of redemption. Not only does this climax come so abruptly that we feel no sense of sadness at the HMC’s farewell to the real world, it even fails to justify why the hell the scientists bothered to teleport him, and why they didn’t think of bringing back clearly superior HMCs as reflected in the flashback scenes.

And moreover, if he hates the real world so much as suggested by his brief antics, why does Rice contradict himself categorically by having the HMC utter a tearful speech at the end? What’s worse is that Annie Lennox’s Into The West is used as the underlying theme of this segment of the film, but where its relevance in reality was used to personify the end of an expansive Middle-Earth epic, now it’s used in complete disagreement to the rest of the film, which makes its usage neither relevant nor important (indeed the use of an Elvis remix suggests a jauntiness that is completely alien to the film's ending). At this point of the film you’d think the use of Into The West may at least serve to justify the HMC’s happiness at returning to his homeland. In fact, his pretentious begging at the end suggests this and by now this is the only thing going for the film. However, instead Rice has the scene cut to the HMCs world, where once the teleportation window has ceased, the Handmade Character walks off. He walks off. At what point the audience are meant to embrace this ending is beyond me. The buildup to this particular moment could have potentially made ends meet, rather than serving up one of the most overcooked and underwhelming shots I have ever seen in a 3dmm film.

What can be said of The Handmade Character? Self-celebratory certainly: lacking any actual application to anything focal indefinitely. If you’re reading this Ben: the film lacked a narrative strong enough to substantiate itself. That is why you failed this time. Still, at least I can finish this article with the knowledge you’ll at least learn from it. And to his merit, he put effort in. Despite the narrative, the work is there. So in my mind, Rice has to a degree redeemed himself. He could be worse. He could have made Killing Ramza Brave.