Zero Charisma is a terrible, terrible movie. It was directed by a couple (as in the relationship term) and written by what I presume to be somebody who has seen every episode of the Big Bang Theory, because it attempts to create a movie based upon the same lines - that nerds are just funny because nerds are funny. This is an evolution of the ridicule and torment all nerds faced in their formative years, especially those of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s and had assholes pick on us for being different. Basically one of those assholes made a movie and also somehow got the recipe right for a character study. It's like the movie does everything right EXCEPT have a cohesive arc and satisfying plot. Well, also it has some terrible tropes. Let's begin somewhat at the beginning:
Scott is a gamer nerd. In fact he's almost a believable character. He's into metal as many gamers are, he is writing/has written his own game system as many are, he lives with his grandma and doesn't seem to have gotten a very fair shake in life (like so many do) because, as will become evident, his mother is a fucking cunt. Dad's not in the picture either, probably has something to do with his mom being in a sex cult and likely not knowing who Scott's dad is. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Basically Scott has an inferiority complex and megalomaniacal tendencies all GMs can have because his life is fucking garbage and he uses RPGs as a coping mechanism to escape his horrible reality. He's a delivery boy as a job, and really the only thing the movie does well is set up WHY he's such an ass. If I was him I'd be an ass too.
So the first important scene in the movie is the first game night. It's interrupted by his grandma wanting to make a sandwich. She asks him to open a jar for her. He gets very hateful about it BUT DOES IT. That's a defining character trait that comes through in the movie. Scott's an ass, but he's a dependable ass. I've seen some critics say he has no redeeming character traits, but he actually has a few which I will highlight. But the movie itself wants you to constantly root against him. It's written by somebody who isn't and hasn't ever been, a nerd or teased/picked on. Somebody who definitely called another kid "gay" as a pejorative when he was a kid but was never called "gay" himself in the same way.
At the same time another group member (all of whom aren't character'd enough to get names but Scott's #2 Wayne, so lets call this guy Randy) finds out his wife Becky is going to break up with him. It's a very very short scene, but it seems like the fucking game session itself is the cause for their falling out. Scott calls Becky a bitch to her husband Randy. I want to be straight here - if your wife won't let you come to a game one night a week without threatening a separation, she's a bitch. If she thinks you're fucking around on her, she's fucking around on you. It's called projection. Scott is absolutely looking out for Randy but the movie frames it to where Scott is the ass. And while Scott definitely has his own motivation for wanting to keep Randy around, he comes to the correct conclusion, kinda like Archie Bunker was often right in All in the Family for all the wrong reasons.
So, skip ahead (and yes I'm skipping some awkward scenes other reviews dwell on) Scott meets Miles. Miles is a hipster piece of shit human being, but the movie frames him as "the likeable guy". Essentially Miles and Scott are the same guy, but Miles has better grooming habits and the writers gave him an unattainable Manic Pixie Dream Girl girlfriend that he absolutely could not have gotten himself because she doesn't exist outside of movies. Again, I get ahead of myself. Miles is invited to sub in for Randy, who's been out of the movie for a while now and ain't coming back.
They have a game night (2) and Miles does a lot of bragging, brings a six pack to tide people over even though most gamers don't game drunk (meaning he's not a real gamer obviously therefore has no way of knowing this), brags about his girlfriend 100% treating her as an object/fucktoy. I'm not entirely sure the girlfriend ever gets a name either. The group loses their shit over all this because lolnerds can't get laid so I have to interject here. There are nerd girls. Nerd boys find nerd girls and fuck them (and vice-versa). That's how nerds generally get laid. That's how I have two kids. This is when I realized Miles was a hipster one-upsman douchebag pile of shit. But the movie plays it off like he's just Dane Cook getting pussy and complaining about the amount of pussy he's getting. Like he's The Everyman That's So Relatable.
Skipping back or skipping forward, Grandma has a stroke. But apparently not a debilitating stroke, because she seems exactly the same for the rest of the movie. Scott calls his mom to tell her, which is a grown up thing to do in spite of the fact he obviously can't stand her for good reason. She says she's coming to town. This means he has to clean out the guest room. He bitches about it BUT DOES IT. So now Scott's mom Barbara and her fiancee Bob are in the movie. There's even a great joke because Bob says "Your mom has told me all about you." and Scott retorts "Oh yeah, what?" This implies his mom doesn't even fucking know him to say anything about him, which is completely accurate, but is played off like there's nothing to tell because Scott's a loser fatty nerd dork.
Game night 3 sees Barbara ruin a game in spite of her being a guest and honestly needing to have some shame for not raising her son. Basically they're about to start and Barb comes out and decides it's gonna be too noisy. When Scott retaliates (and yes, he's an ass) she sits down and starts telling embarrassing stories about Scott's youth specifically to end the game. Now, this is where the movie departs reality by a lot because if it was my friends at my table, they'd look at this bitch and one would ask "What the fuck are you doing? You don't raise him, haven't seen him in years, and now you're antagonizing him in his house you're a guest in? Fucking mother of the year." In short she'd get a fucking earful of it until her and Bob were at a Motel 6 crying into a pillow. Barb is actually the worst person in this movie because she's more realistic than Miles and has absolutely no redeeming qualities, unlike Scott.
Game Night 4 sees Scott break. And there's a lot to unpack here. It apparently happens at Miles house, and Miles' girlfriend (let's call her Candy) Candy answers the door, which is super progressive, then has an awkward flirty conversation with Scott that makes zero sense to him, the audience, and basically the human race. This girl would not have this conversation and hold Scott's hand in a suggestive way. The entire interaction is uncomfortable and makes it seems like she's trying to turn their couple into a thruple, because she doesn't give any of the other group members (Larry, Moe, Curly, and Wayne) the time of day. After that Candy doesn't play the game and awkwardly goes from being in a cocktail/conservative dress into realistic sleeping attire (which I kinda applaud but it doesn't help what comes next). Scott has a sorta lame set-up for an adventure path, kinda railroady, but that's what this group signed up for and has played. Miles attempts to ruin it via stabbing non-hostile NPC quest-giver in the face. Gamers know this is a faux-pas. All gamers. Then Scott makes the bad decision to give it a chance of success. This was his mistake, and Murphy's Law strikes again. He tries to get the game back on track by fudging a "Stamina roll", but Candy sees this and calls him out on it, which is also against the spirit of the game. The reason you roll behind a screen is so players don't know the outcome. I personally wouldn't have put myself in the fudging position by loudly claiming "Seriously dude?" and then we'd all have a laugh and then the campaign would have progressed as normal. Also the NPC in question shouldn't ever have the quest item on him. Because then if a dumbass player decides to knife him in the face, then they're up shit creek. But these are all digressions, both Scott and Miles were totally sucking ass here.
After the session (or maybe immediately after because the session is derailed at that point) Miles talks about his comic book he is shopping for publishers of. Scott is obviously jealous but gives him the COMPLETELY SOUND advice of watching out for big company thievery. He spins a tale of The Matrix being his work, which everyone (even Scott) knows is bullshit but he's just trying to qualify his advice. Miles pokes holes in it and sorta points out what everybody knows is that there's no way but does it in the douchebaggiest way possible. Two points here:
1: Miles isn't in talks to publish his comics. He won't name the comic publisher because there isn't one. He's flexing again. Because he's a hipster douchebag. He does comics as a hobby, and if he wanted them published he'd do it on the site he is an editor* of NerdHerd.com or whatever the fuck fake website they pretend is a thing in the movie.
*There's a good chance he's not an editor, just a contributor. Which means he's far lower in the food chain and is just flexing yet again with the editor title.
2: He straight up calls Scott out by SAYING HE KNOWS the Wachowski's. Which at the start of the conversation he had trouble remembering The Matrix was a Keanu Reeves movie. Either knowing famous filmmakers is forgettable to this dude, or he's full of shit. Spoilers: It's the latter.
Because Miles is a content creator (or maybe editor) on a nerd site, he needs the group because he wants to EXPLOIT their culture to generate content so he can get paid. Miles is a fucking ass, and probably a sub-in for the writer/director for the movie considering he's a considerable douchebag and nobody calls him out on it. He promotes Larry, Curly, and Moe's zombie video on his site for clicks and while they may benefit from it, he also benefits from it in the monetary sense.
Sorry, I left the movie again. So the session ends with Scott getting pissed and trying to drag his friends out of Miles's house. It predictably fails. Scott leaves alone.
I'm going to skip the "Gary Gygax/Game Store" subplot entirely. It is completely unnecessary in the film, because all it does is affirm that Scott is a fat megalomaniacal loser/etc and the entire goddamn movie already hits you in the face with that every goddamn scene. They didn't use the GG name because he'd been dead for a few years at this point and it would be in very bad taste. So instead of just finding a living nerd to pay (Tim Kask, Steve Jackson, Kevin Siembieda, Larry Elmore... there are fucking dozens), they went with a fictitious version of Gary Gygax which is completely and utterly heartless though the character isn't on screen long enough for it to matter anyway. This ruins the movie's verisimilitude worse than the not-nerdist website insert.
So after having a bit of a breakdown after the events of the last paragraph, Scott heads over to Miles house to confront him. He's having a party. None of the gamers are there. This is when Mile's true colors should be shown to the audience, but instead they act like Scott is a fucking home invader. Miles asks Scott to leave, Scott says no. Miles calls Wayne to pick up Scott. Wayne's like "You're having a party?". Wayne shows up just in time for the fistfight between Miles and Scott which is very unrealistic.
A 300 lb lummox will kill a 150 lb stickman in any fight ever. He will not catch him in a foot race, but if you get close and the lummox lays hands on you, you're fucking done because he can pick you up and throw you, or hit you as hard as your entire body weight with a rush attack. Unless you're talking Bruce Lee levels of training, size is basically the most important element of any fight. That's why it's often a height comparison that shows who the underdog is in boxing movies. The fight is very, very badly choreographed.
Skip ahead again, Barbara who's been home for 10 fucking minutes and done nothing but be a miserable cunt bitch pile of shit gets Grandma to sell her house to pay off debts Barb has accrued by being a useless pile of human trash. She wants to do this so said debts don't come to light to Bob after they get married soon. So Grandma moves to an old folk's home and Scott will now be homeless because of the continued bad decisions of his fucking awful fucking bitch whore cunt mother fucking mother. Bizarrely Scott doesn't fucking strangle this bitch and dump her body in a ditch, which IMHO is grounds to get the goddamn Nobel Peace Prize considering how many times she's fucked him over and has been just a terrible, terrible mother.
Nothing much happens in the rest of the movie, the protagonist Scott marginally gets better after having his ass nominally kicked and his home stolen, which is a very bad moral to the story. I'm serious that the moral of the story is if a dude is turned into a shitheel by life kicking him in the teeth over and over, it just takes a few more healthy kicks to turn it around for him and put him on the right track. What is this filmmaker fucking retarded?
The game group from the beginning of the movie is destroyed, Scott is now DMing for people in the retirement home/hospice/etc his mom inhabits. The movie points out he's still an asshole DM even though he's spending time with elderly people who've been shuttled off to a home so their families don't have to deal with them anymore. Scott is ostensibly doing something altruistic but because it's Scott, he still has to be a shithead. This part of the movie almost makes sense because nothing in the entire movie has actually given him a reason to grow - only affirmed his terrible personality over and over. The "progress" he makes is giving some geezer an extra 5% of a chance in the game, and that amount of development for Scott's character seems at odds with the entire movie.
Miles never gets his comeuppance because the writers don't think he deserves anything else than being exhausted by fucking an impossible imaginary woman (Personally I hope they both get the herp). Barb and Bob eventually separate because she's garbage and you can only cover up garbage with purfume so long before the odor seeps through (and I'm SURE they both have the herp considering she's seen more dicks than a Richard convention). I liked this part.
Basically this is the worst script I've ever seen in a gamer movie. The actors, cinematography, sound, production design, etc are good to great. The problem is the script author and director, who are the same person. So you fucking suck and sucking fuck, Andrew Matthews you weaselly prick fucking bastard shitheel. And your wife Katie is a bitch (obviously).
That was the required comedic ending to this review. Nothing further to see here.
