Magic Farm, which premiered Tuesday at the Sundance Film Festival, is a misguided comedy. As the film continues, it only grows more frustrating to watch it explore its flawed premise.
The plan hits a road block when producer Jeff (Alex Wolff) takes them to the wrong San Cristobal. There's a San Cristobal in multiple South American countries, and the artist is not in Argentina.
The joke is mocking these mostly White Americans screwing up South America, and trying to exploit such cultures. Only one crew member, Elena (writer-director Amalia Ulman), speaks Spanish.
For a comedy, the characters are not funny goofballs. Most of them are pretty hateful.
Jeff screws up a lot of arrangements and then cries about it. He claims he's sensitive, when he's really just whining and denying his own responsibility.When locals offer assistance, Jeff keeps responding, "That doesn't help us," as if the whole country should cater to the visiting Americans. This may be an accurate portrayal of a narcissist, but it's not a funny one.
Edna is an insecure performer who obsesses about these mistakes, even though if everything goes right, she's still exploiting other cultures. The character is also not in the movie enough, as Magic Farm mostly follows her unappealing crew members.
Elena seems competent and respectful. She is pregnant with a married man's child, but all of the characters have standard relationship dramas involving affairs.
The crew decides to fake a local event so they can produce a segment on their trip. This is a blank canvas for comedy, but what they come up with is neither funny nor credible.
The group auditions dancers who perform bad choreography poorly. One looks in the camera while doing an interview, a common frustration of on-air hosts but not really humor.
Local mother Popa (Valeria Lois) tells a cute story about Gerard Depardieu, but that is the only highlight.
The characters use an iPhone for online posting, but the real-life movie looks like iPhone footage as well, even though the filmmakers used professional grade Red cameras. The film may be about online videographers, but the filmmakers didn't need to make the movie look like we're watching it on our phones.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.