Some microcinema efforts are made with so little dough, they appear to be shot in a garage. James L. Edward’s Trivial absolutely is, and doesn’t even try to hide the fact. Nor does it need to, because the movie is about a crazed woman broadcasting an underground game show across the internet, directly from, yep, her garage.
Conveniently, that’s why Edwards also can get away with the copy-shop vinyl banner behind his star’s head. I’m honestly impressed he sprang for grommets!
Laurel Edmonds (Sasha Graham, The Vicious Sweet) is our hostess with the mostest — loose screws, that is. Her kidnapped and bound contestants take turns answering questions like:
• What’s the only food that doesn’t spoil?
• Which animal has three vaginas?
• Who here knowingly spread an STD to multiple partners?
Get an answer wrong, get your face cut. Get three answers wrong, get killed. (For the record, the respective answers are “honey,” “kangaroo” and “girrrrrl, don’t look at me.”)
Edwards himself (over-)plays the reigning champion, an obnoxious, sexist, alcoholic motel clerk in a distracting, overly curled Danny McBride-style mullet wig. The lone female contestant is Shianne Daye, who gets a “Special Appearance By” credit. Since she’s not a known quantity, I don’t know why she merits such a shout-out, other than perhaps Edwards’ undying appreciation for their explicit sex scenes in his directorial debut, Her Name Was Christa.
I appreciate how he creatively weaves in public-domain footage from quiz shows of yesteryear like Beat the Clock, both in the credit sequence and as cutaway reaction shots that served as HBO’s Dream On differentiator. Yet it’s not enough to detract from Trivial’s obvious problem: It’s ceaseless in repetition, more or less composed of five back-to-back episodes. Remove the mutilation and we’re essentially watching round after round of bar trivia.
Minute by minute, the reason to tune in to Trivial is Graham’s winning star turn as a wine o’clock MILF clearly working through Some Shit. Almost invisibly disarming, she marries the looks of Mariksa Hargitay with the sassy, sexy personality of Jennifer Tilly, minus the helium. —Rod Lott