A Legacy of Whining – Indie Film Review

Hello everyone Kevin of Film Fervor here bringing you another Independent film review. Today we will be discussing the 2016 buddy comedy A Legacy of Whining, written and directed by Ross Munro. Starring Ross Munro and Robert David Duncan.

A Legacy of Whining is a dark comedy centered on the reunion of failing over the hill actor Mitch(Ross Munro) and his old childhood friend Dunc (Robert David Duncan) as they try to recapture their youthful spirit. Mitch arrives at the airport and a series of strange events take place around him while he is waiting for his friend to arrive. Once together Dunc immediately remembers why he hasn’t spoken to Mitch in over thirty years as the aging actor complains constantly how things have changed since their youth. A Series of misadventures culminates into the final parting of the friends and the hopelessness of trying to change your life while clinging to the past.

A Legacy of Whining has perhaps one of the best production values I have seen on an independent film. The cinematography is beautifully fluid and the camera crews show a high degree of professionalism in nearly all scenes of the film. Very few places are you ever jarred out of the experience with jerky shakes or weird and uncomfortable angles and the sound quality is something that every aspiring director could hope for.

The voices are always clear and pitched perfectly to hear without straining and the music from “The Snotty Punks” fits perfectly into the film and is perhaps the most funny and best part of the film. So from a purely production based point of view A Legacy of Whining is a smashing success, that said however the content of the film is problematic for me.

The Script it’s self is a little all over the place with random weird characters cropping up in several places that are never fully explored or explained and a subplot of kidnapping and extortion that is just abandoned right at the end of the film before anything can come of it. At several places in A Legacy of Whining Mitch had daydreams that almost felt like I was watching Scrubs and seeing J.D’s fantasies. These visual gags were actually funny and slightly crazy to see and so added a great deal to the motivations of Mitch in the film. That said however at times it felt like the entire movie’s plot was just a setup by Dunc to sabotage Mitch’s early morning audition and if that was the case it would have been much more entertaining of a movie for me, however it wasn’t the case and just left me confused as to what I just watched.

Humor is a highly subjective matter and it is very hard to get two people to agree on what is funny or not and to me A Legacy of Whining comes across as dry and a bit dull. Ross Munro’s Mitch lives up to the film’s title perfectly with his constant litany of whining about every last little issue he comes across. Normally this would be a great thing but the acting of Munro just comes off as flat in most places and way over the top in others that left me cringing whenever something interesting was happening in the film, also his insistence of using Dunc’s name at the start of almost all of his conversations was rather annoying to me. Robert David Duncan’s performance on the other hand is very well thought out and comes off as a bitter middle aged man having a major midlife crisis as he was meant to be. He is darkly sarcastic and clearly annoyed by his old childhood friend’s constant complaining and just seemed more comfortable in front of the camera than Munro.

This film was very hard to review as like I said humor is very subjective and it just wasn’t my type of humor. That said though if you find sarcastic and dark humor your thing I highly recommend you check A Legacy of Whining out as it is very worth it just for the wonderful production quality and the minutia of detail Ross Munro managed to pack into the film, including a full music video starring himself and fellow actress Nohemie Racine (Cameo, as Sports car fantasy woman 1). Over all I give A Legacy of Whining a three out of five stars.

Justin’s Notes – This goes to show you that tastes differ wildly in film review but the results are generally always good. I really enjoyed the humor in this one, something about the absurdity of the characters and their situation was enough to get me chuckling. All in all, we definitely liked the film but it was more my cup o’ tea than Kevin’s.