The Machine

I have never heard of a movie which serves as a sequel to a stand-up bit. Sketches and personas expanded to feature length, sure; Abbott and Costello, the SNL movies, Borat, and so much more before and since. But those bank on the characters or the story or the talent. The fictional world is being expanded by the film. Part of the joy is seeing what new directions they can take a joke which was initially designed to only occupy five minutes at a time. In many cases, the recurrence of the character/story has already laid the foundation for the movie to come. I think of Wayne’s World or even Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where although the characters were new the troupe’s voice was previously established. In each case, the creation of a movie was more about nurturing talent than it was about the specifics of their previous work.

A stand-up story doesn’t fit that mold. It is, however, one of my favorite ways for a stand-up to end their set is a big story. I bet there’s a more specific name for it, but they’re those longer, fantastical narratives comedians will launch into (often with a signature line) which allows them a bunch of small crescendos and jokes to slowly build to a big laugh to close it out. Famous recent examples are John Mulaney’s Xanax Story or Ron White’s They Call Me “Tater Salad”. Their goal is to leave the audience wanting more, and washing away any feeling of disappointment if the set didn’t really land. Make them remember you in a good light. Maybe if you squint at them just right, you could consider them modern tall tales?

In any case, when Bert Kreischer’s The Machine went viral back in early 2017, I got swept up in it. I loved the story, and many quotes from it still rattle around in my head. I even saw him perform live a few months later, which is where I discovered his overall style isn’t really my thing. The comedian who opened for him, Liz Miele, remains one of my favorites, but his act left a bad taste in my mouth, so I stopped paying him any attention. Until this trailer dropped, and I got real curious about what in the hell it could possibly be.

The Machine finds Bert (as himself) over 20 years after that fateful semester in Russia. Russian mobster Idina (Iva Babić) shows up at his daughter’s Sweet Sixteen, demanding to know what he did with her family’s pocket watch after stealing it during that trip. Turns out it lies at the center of a power struggle in the family, and only by retrieving it can Idina prove she’s worthy of taking over the family. So when he claims he left it with one of the mobsters, she kidnaps him and his father Albert (Mark Hamill) and takes them to Russia to track it down, placing them squarely in the middle of the gang war.

Honestly, I went into this film with pretty low expectations. Most of these stand-up comedian vanity projects devolve into poorly written versions of their routines, which is part of why they’re not that common. And this one was based directly on a specific bit. So my expectation was that it was going to get all wrapped up in references or Bert making jokes or something like that.

Instead, we’re treated to a well constructed albeit intensely silly plot-driven story, but one which doesn’t forget to develop its characters. The humor often comes at Bert’s expense, or from the absurdity of the situation. And yet somehow, the fish out of water aspect doesn’t get tiring. Maybe it’s because he’s not completely lost, having been in all these places before, bestowing him with some undeserved confidence. Even as it’s clear he has no business in this world.

One of the smartest things they do is immediately establish some emotional stakes, letting us know that while this is going to be a comedy, there’s more to it. Always a partier, Bert (the character) has gone into overdrive since the viral success of “The Machine”. His family is sick of his obnoxious and selfish behavior, none more than his daughter Sasha (Jessica Gabor), as his antics almost got her arrested (which we learn more about later). And he knows it. As a dad and a husband, he’s really trying, but he can’t help himself. There’s a sadness in him, and we really get the sense that his relationship with his family is at risk here. We also meet Albert around this point, who seems to think Bert can do nothing right, giving an obvious opportunity for growth.

None of that is particularly fresh, no. But it’s well executed, and allows us to have actual emotional beats later in the film that make sense and feel earned. And then we wrap it around some fun action scenes, where Idina gets to demonstrate how much she totally rules, which helps to build up the sense that yeah, she absolutely deserves to run this family. We find ourselves rooting for her pretty quickly, even though one of her men is prepared to kill Sasha if Bert stops cooperating.

The plot is propelled forward by two complimentary pieces. One is Bert’s flashbacks, triggered by being in these places from his college trip. They usually include some hint to the watch’s whereabouts, or at least who they should talk to next to find it. The other is that Idina’s brothers Fedor (Aleksandar Sreckovic) and Alexei (Robert Maaser) are also hunting for the watch, and keep showing up to kidnap Bert for themselves. This drives the story to a new location, where we get another flashback, and so on. Through this, we retrace most of the steps of young Bert.

These flashbacks are probably the weakest part of the film. They do add another small subplot and serve to ground some of the more audacious scenes, but the movie grinds to a halt for us to see a visualization of Bert’s stand-up story, He narrates it and we hear a few of the key lines. Sure, they flesh out that world a bit, but they don’t add that much. It doesn’t help that Jimmy Tatro, who plays young Bert, just doesn’t have the same life and energy that adult Bert has, leaving the flashbacks feeling quite flat. At least they serve a purpose, but they’re definitely bloat.

Despite Bert’s stand-up mostly not being my thing, I found the sense of humor hits far more than it misses. One key is that it all feels tailored to the story we’re witnessing, like appropriate and human reactions to an insane circumstance. I never felt the movie grind to a halt for Bert to do a tight five. All the jokes felt new, and yet were very clearly in his comedic voice. That’s the other thing: all the characters had their own personality, they weren’t just mouthpieces for Bert’s jokes nor were they only there to set him up. One of the funniest and most insane lines (and line reads) in the whole film comes during the climax, and is not said by him. That willingness to spread around the spotlight really helps it feel like they cared to make a movie, not just highlght Bert.

The other thing is that Bert is a goober. Sure, he’s got this tough guy persona, but that falls apart the moment he’s in Russia and faced with any real danger. He tries his damnedest to stay out of the violence, although the times he gets pulled in yield delightful results. His escapades as The Machine are the stuff of folktales now, but try as he might, he can’t really live up to that image, and most anyone who meets him laughs at the idea he was once this figure. He’s neither better than everyone nor a complete loser, which really just lands.

This is not a movie which had any business working at all, never might causing me to leave the theater with a huge smile on my face. It’s not an amazing movie by any stretch; some of the themes and subplots they start down go nowhere or come out jumbled, and even those which work are kinda weak. You can see the writers poking through at times. And it is ultimately a vanity project.

But god damn if this wasn’t a super fun time.