Comala

Directed by Gian Cassini, Comala follows the first-time filmmaker as he sets out to discover the truth about his estranged father and, in the process, uncovers a handful of long-buried family secrets. It’s a workable setup for what could have been an intriguing, eye-opening documentary, and yet Comala, in Cassini’s styleless hands, quickly establishes itself as a punishingly pointless effort that contains few, if any, elements designed to capture and sustain one’s interest and attention. The picture’s most obvious problem is its complete lack of an entry point for the viewer, as Cassini spends much of Comala’s interminable running time interviewing less-than-captivating subjects and detailing their exploits in years and decades past – with the bulk of this stuff hardly as captivating or even worthwhile as Cassini has clearly intended. (This material might’ve worked in the context of a five minute anecdote at a party, but as a feature-length endeavor it’s nothing short of disastrous.) And although Cassini does offer up a very small assortment of compelling sequences, including (and especially) his encounter with an oddball, gun-toting grandfather, Comala builds towards a seriously anticlimactic closing stretch that cements its place as a well-intentioned yet hopelessly underwhelming piece of work.

* out of ****