Director Tom Shadyac Tells of Personal Revelations in ‘I Am’

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Rating: 1.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Tom Shadyac was on top of the world. He had directed several blockbuster comedies including “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,” “Bruce Almighty,” “The Nutty Professor” and more. When he got into an accident and found himself the victim of a syndrome that made him welcome coming death, he reached that revelatory moment that often happens to people in horrible situations as he reassessed not only his value system but that of the entire world. He chronicled his journey for “I Am,” a well-intentioned documentary that is just too unfocused, scattered, and philosophically thin to matter,

Shadyac’s film starts with the filmmaker asking two questions — “What’s wrong with our world?” and “What can we do about it?” He wraps his personal story around interviews with a wide variety of subjects from CEOs to writers to Noam Chomsky and Desmond Tutu. With a shocking lack of focus, “I Am” bounces around like a social/philosophical pinball machine, with most of the subjects centering around what is the nature of the human being?

I Am
Photo credit: Paladin

The basic point that Shadyac and his bizarre selection of interview subjects (while hearing from great minds like Noam Chomsky and Desmond Tutu is nice, Shadyac’s list of subjects seems oddly assembled, as if it was those who returned his calls that made the cut) are making is a good one. We have been taught the model of the individual — competition, amassing of wealth, accomplishments, etc. — but it actually goes against human evolution in that community and cooperation are as hardwired in us as anything.

Shadyac goes back and forth from personal stories to commentaries on the nature of man overall, never quite successfully blending the two. We hear about the director’s initial success — and, while it’s set up as a joke, asking his interview subjects if they’ve heard of “Ace Ventura” was an oddly self-centered choice for a film supposedly about the opposite — and how he learned that money couldn’t solve his problems. The old-fashioned “money can’t buy you happiness” argument that Shadyac espouses while talking about moving into his mansion is a little hard to take in today’s economic environment. And a bit naive. Most of us know in our core that money and stuff won’t bring you happiness but they certainly make it easier to find that happiness on your own. There’s also a bit of hypocrisy in the fact that Shadyac went through all of these treatments for his syndrome and made this movie and neither would have happened without his “Ace Ventura” money. Getting Jim Carrey to talk out of his ass may not have directly brought Shadyac happiness but it certainly laid the pavement for him to walk on.

Why have we moved away from cooperation to competition? Shadyac’s argument is that this is the core of the problems in our world. It’s an interesting idea and one that deserves exploration but “I Am” is too unfocused to really say anything about it. It feels like Shadyac came up with this theory one day in his hyperbaric chamber and set about to ask questions and edit the answers to support them. He seems like a good guy and I like the ideas he’s trying to espouse here but that doesn’t make “I Am” a solid documentary. It’s like listening to a folk musician on open mic night — he probably has some decent ideas in his lyrics but it’s the tune that sounds off.

I Am
Photo credit: Paladin

And when “I Am” gets deeply into the wacky as we hear about how we’re breathing the same air particles as Joan of Arc and Jesus Christ and a man claims to have proven to find the “human spirit or higher self” through an actual experiment and yogurt reads Tom Shadyac’s mind (yes, you read that right…yogurt responds to Tom’s “human emotionality” in one of the most ridiculous documentary scenes of all time), the film loses its way entirely. You know that long-haired guy who has some really solid ideas about how we should treat each other better but they get lost in, for lack of a better word, “hippie” extremity that just makes him impossible to identify with? Most of us knew that guy in college. Tom Shadyac is that guy — totally likable over a drink or a bong, but nearly impossible to take seriously.

Tom Shadyac took an amazing personal journey. But that doesn’t make for a good film. I’m sure one could sit down over coffee and have a fascinating conversation about the realizations he came to and how his life changed. One such conversation was probably the impetus to make “I Am.” But with it’s lack of focus, simple philosophy, and random sociological commentary, “I Am” simply doesn’t work. Not every revelation or coffee house conversation would make a good documentary.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com