If you consider flipping the bird at your friends, or having your friends flip the bird at you, to be a tremendously hilarious and witty act, then maybe you’ll like Hesher.
The title character, an all-together unpleasant person to have to watch on-screen, has a large tattoo of a raised middle finger on his back. Seeing this image often (Hesher spends much of his time shirtless), I came to feel that the entire movie was but a means to flipping me off. And no, I didn’t find it particularly funny.
Which is not to say that Hesher is primarily a comedy. Given the misery and pain through which the characters suffer, and the way the score repeatedly underlines the tragedy with depressive musical accents, it’s more of a drama.
But if it’s fiercely unfunny and tone-deaf as a comedy, then it’s an often-laughable misfire as a drama. Was that director Spencer Susser’s plan?
He certainly seems out to defy the expectations of the audience. The story begins after a fatal accident has wrecked the lives of young T.J. (Devin Brochu) and his father Paul (Rainn Wilson). They’re living at Grandma’s (Piper Laurie), and Paul sleeps his misery away while heavily medicated. T.J. is left to cope with his own pain.
As if his life weren’t bad enough, one day T.J. runs afoul of Hesher (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). And that’s when the boy’s misery starts becoming ours. Hesher is a self-absorbed, long-haired, tattooed, unkempt, uncouth anarchist who was squatting in a home under construction until T.J. accidentally revealed the spot to a local security guard.
Hesher decides that T.J. owes him one, so he follows the boy to school and then back to Grandma’s, where he makes himself at home too. T.J. is too terrified to contradict Hesher when he explains to Paul and Grandma that he’s a friend whom the boy invited to stay. Paul is too drugged, and Grandma too nice, to object.
In a typical film plot, the unconventional, mysterious stranger would arrive into the lives of this suffering family and help them break free of their pain thanks to his oddball view of the world. That sort of happens with Hesher, but not before he makes their lives a whole lot worse for a time.
Hesher doesn’t talk much, but when he does it’s usually to share some sex-related metaphor. He doesn’t hesitate to tell a dirty joke about Kermit the Frog in an attempt to cheer up Grandma, and he seems perplexed when she doesn’t laugh. When he and T.J. befriend Nicole (Natalie Portman) and she’s talking about what an epically bad day she’s having, Hesher responds by recounting in detail the time he had sex with three women at once in the back of his van. “Is that supposed to be a metaphor?” Nicole asks. “What?” he replies, just as confused as she.
I think we’re supposed to laugh at these exchanges — about Hesher’s complete lack of a filter and seeming disregard for the concerns of others — but the context of the scenes is all wrong. He really is just saying horrifyingly nasty things in response to the heartfelt expressions of others. I felt sorry for the other characters, that they had to hang around with this guy, but mostly I just felt sorry for myself.
