If you consider yourself any of the below, chances are I hate you:
• influencer
• thought leader
• public figure
• storyteller
All are narcissistic labels for that most 21st-century of phenomena: the “internet celebrity,” famous for being famous. Fewer targets mark themselves more ripe for skewering, which is why something like the mockumentary The Social Ones holds delicious appeal. I say “something like” because for all its potential, the movie is toothless where it should be ruthless.
The Social Ones is written, directed and produced by tyro Laura Kosann. She and her sister, Danielle Kosann, also star as the sane ones in this ensemble comedy. Working at the thankfully fictional magazine The National Influencer, they feverishly prep for — and stress-puke over — the following month’s fifth-anniversary cover shoot, which will showcase such superstars of social media as a teen-dream Snapchat king (Colton Ryan), a demanding Instagram fashion model (Amanda Giobbi), a high-strung YouTube chef (Desi Domo, The Conjuring), an insecure vlogger (Nicole Kang, TV’s Batwoman) and “meme god” Kap Phat Jawacki (Setareki Wainiqolo). For the sake of story, the stakes could not be any lower.
Although the film is clearly modeled from the Christopher Guest template, it is difficult to tell whether the jokes are driven by the script or improv. Either way, with few exceptions, they’re simply not funny, no matter how hard the actors try; unfortunately, most of them do so by cranking their exaggeration dials three or four notches further than the illusory nature of the mockumentary subgenre recommends, if not demands.
If Kosann had trimmed her scenes to align with the short attention span of the digital generation, the film could settle into a more natural comedic rhythm. As is, the bits drag on and on, with the most glaring offender being Kap Phat creating a meme in real time from disparate elements on a huge bulletin board — the kind you see on every obsessive-detective crime show, full of clippings and pushpins and string connecting them. The sequence is painful.
The movie is not a complete #fail, even if each occasional plus gets canceled out. Domo’s Holly Hunter lilt is endearing, as opposed to Giobbi’s annoying Judy Garland. Peter Scolari delivers an amusing-enough cameo, whereas Richard Kind grates. I enjoyed the magazine intern (Nicky Maindiratta) harboring a stalker-like same-sex crush on Ryan’s Snapchat kid, but we’re ghosted by a payoff. Kosann nails several aspects of the characters, from the minor (the mangling of “important” as “impor’ant”) to the major (vacuous self-importance), so she obviously knows her subjects well. I simply wish she had followed through on the setup by satirizing them instead of celebrating them. —Rod Lott