The Bellmen

Directed by Cameron Fife, The Bellmen follows Adam Ray’s Steve as he attempts to juggle a whole host of personal issues while also attending to the various responsibilities of his bell-captain job. It’s clear almost immediately that filmmaker Fife is looking to emulate the feel of an old-school comedy involving ragtag misfits, and yet there’s little doubt that The Bellmen is, by and large, unable to cultivate the fun-loving, easygoing vibe that one might’ve anticipated – with the movie suffering from a whole host of misguided elements that cumulatively transform it into something of a tedious ordeal. The most obvious problem here, ultimately, is Fife’s continuing reliance on jokes and gags of a decidedly laugh-free (and flat-out desperate) nature, as the writer/director offers up a series of comedic set-pieces that are hardly able to make the knee-slapping impact for which he’s obviously striving. (This is never more true than in the entirety of Thomas Lennon’s painfully broad turn as a shady wellness guru, with this disastrously unfunny character emblematic of everything that’s wrong with the picture.) The final result is a well-intentioned piece of work that kind of passes the time but mostly misses the mark, which is too bad, certainly, given that movies of this ilk hardly come around as often as they once did.

** out of ****