The term “loser” has arrived today to describe not someone who is unable to attain what they desire but someone who only desires being victimized for engagement online. Not someone who is a virgin and desperate to no longer be, but someone who revels in their inability to make small talk with the person they’re attracted to-- turning the true feeling of being ostracized into a prized category. The loser in American society was once an outcast, an unmotivated dunce unable to create his own luck or financial success. One with a lack of realistic aspirations but a keen awareness of unmet desires and the fleeting window of their viability. This is the loser that Conner O’Malley and Danny Scharar’s “Rap World” is interested in. And there is a very well established Loser Cinematic Universe they draw from; “La Haine,” “Funny Ha Ha,” “Meantime,” that offers losers an alternative, sort of Cioran-esque mode of being cool.
Set in 2009, the film’s plot is nominal; a group of friends are coming together to record an entire album in one night. But “Rap World” most heavily relies on the dynamic between its three leads, Jack Bensinger as Casey, Eric Rahill as Jason and co-director Conner O’Malley as Matt, perhaps the wildest man you’ll see on screen this year. As they procrastinate away their one and only night of studio time (Casey’s mom’s basement), the stakes only lessen, eventually devolving into a much more nihilistic thematic focus. The 55 minute runtime is filled with desperate aspirations and fathomless mediocrity perfectly coalescing into the most atrocious song you’ve ever heard that will be stuck in your head forever.
Bensinger, Rahill and O’Malley seem to understand their characters intrinsically and perform them to an almost disturbingly accurate tune. Rahill nails Jason’s pitiful self aggrandizing, Bensinger inhabits Casey’s crafty optimism, and O’Malley carries Matt’s aggressive stupidity on every inch of his body. They speak to each other with the kind of grammar you would hear on a high school bus. I’ve found myself randomly jolted into laughter since my initial viewing, erratic moments popping into my mind like lights on a switchboard. Namely; Casey’s alphabet beatbox in the mirror, Matt’s bars when his ex confronts him about going to a party, at some point Matt says “I’m the white Eminem,” every single scene with the gun.
One of the film’s funniest moments is between Jason and Kiera (Ruby McCollister), at a house party the boys crash instead of recording the album. The interaction is wonderfully set up by Jason’s solo vlog messages to Kiera sprinkled throughout, all taken in Casey’s mom’s bathroom. When Jason finally attempts to give her a promise ring in front of the hookah, she essentially laughs him out of the party. He of course records a final farewell vlog for Kiera later that night. Lamenting his heartbreak he says, “what I’m going through right now has not been felt since World War II by some people that were in it.”
Jason’s disastrous proposal brought to mind another raucous male trio film, John Cassavetes’ “Husbands.” There’s a scene where Ben Gazzara’s Harry, Peter Falk’s Archie and Cassavetes' Gus (also in an actor/director role) sadistically embarrass a woman at a bar that goes on for unbearably long. Pauline Kael wrote a bleak review of “Husbands" that derided the ensembles’ buffoonish behavior on “The Dick Cavett Show” as proof of Cassavetes’ dull imaginativeness.
In her review of “Rap World” for LA Review of Books, Winnie Code writes that despite its “overwhelming boyishness, it’s not vulgar.” I like to imagine Kael watching “Rap World," refreshingly astonished by a Dudes Rock film that manages to characterize its male protagonists without once projecting their loserdom onto the women in their lives. In fact, the women are losers in their own rite, completely independent of the men around them. Casey’s mom is after all out of town getting a surgery because her ears are too far apart. Matt’s sister (Edy Modica) is a grown woman and she doesn’t know the difference between the words oral and orate. As Code writes, “For the most part, the women mock and rebuff these men, who are armed, and don’t die. It’s idyllic.”
The film’s most obvious formal inspirations; “Jackass,” “Trash Humping,” “Superbad,” inform the edit and create the most textually rich period piece since Anna Biller’s “The Love Witch.” Beyond the cinematography and the infinitely poignant needle drops, the set design really solidifies the film's extremely potent post-Bush stench. I am befuddled that none of this footage is actually from 2009.
Everything about “Rap World" feels odd and perfect. Every car ride, every hesitation on a line read, every insert of a chicken nugget. Even their basic sentence construction makes their incessant idiocy heartwarming. The film’s last spoken line is “some of the best nights of my life were being had in parking lots.” Hell yeah they were buddy.