There are many things in life that you are better off not seeing, like how they make chicken nuggets or the film Hello Dankness. Sadly I’ve seen both.
Hello Dankness uses scenes taken from existing films to build itself its own playground for a wide cast of characters. This shared world is used to explore the last few years in US politics, particularly the last two presidential elections. This only serves to remind us that there are other better films we could be watching.
In this constructed world, film characters are made to be seen as supporters of various candidates and ideologies. Annette Bening (Carolyn Burnham) from American Beauty is a Hilary supporter, Ray Peterson (Tom Hanks) from The ‘Burbs is a Bernie supporter, and Wayne Campbell (Mike Myers) of Wayne’s World fame is all in for Trump. These are shown by having posters in their rooms, stickers on their cars, or marble busts of their supposed heroes. It just doesn’t mean anything. None of the scenes in Hello Dankness ever come together to say anything.
Hello Dankness uses six acts to cover events and phenomena such as pizzagate, QAnon, and the Hollywood Access Tape. An attempt is then made to contextualise these within existing films. This contextualisation is meaningless window dressing at best and artless destruction of classics at worst. The iconic scene in Wayne’s World where they blast Bohemian Rhapsody and let loose in their car is dubbed over with a song about Harambe. It is utterly humourless.
What’s so tragic about Hello Dankness is that the format and premise has potential. Using familiar films and characters to show the surreal and often shocking nature of the last few years could have been incredibly powerful. Familiar scenes and faces could help an audience grapple with the sheer unreality of recent years. It could be bold, brutal, and much more than the sum of its collected clips. The end film is none of these things. It’s a bloated mess with no direction that makes a 70 minute run-time last forever.
Hello Dankness begins with a full run of the Kylie Jenner Pepsi advert. It’s actually a strong start, to at least displaying if not interrogating, the funny creeping feeling of detachment and otherworldliness of social media, post-pandemic weirdness, and US political ‘discourse’. None of what follows does this. The best part about this film is an advert for Pepsi, an advert we’ve already seen and one with no further insight given by the film. What follows after is an hour of classic clips with added stickers and news reels of real events that gain nothing from this combination.
This could be forgiven if Hello Dankness successfully made a play for humour. It tries but never succeeds on its own merit. I did laugh during a scene featuring a Microsoft Paint Garfield. As one of the youngest members of the audience, I felt this generational pressure to atone for this brand of anti-humour. Seeing this in a room full of people on the big screen does offer a chance to view it and yourself from a different perspective. In a film full of wasted potential, this became just another example.
Hello Dankness is worse than nothing. I fear it gives the audience that sticks around some feeling of having done something by watching it. If they were to hypothetically find parts funny, they may feel they are meaningfully engaging with the existential issues and phenomena on display here. They’re not. You will find more engaging content in the parallel video mashup universe of YouTube poops. Many of those are very funny; some are well crafted films in and of themselves.
Remove the YouTube from those YouTube Poops and you’re left with this excrement.