I'm Still Here

Joaquim Phoenix and Casey Affleck team up to make what is certainly a hoax; or rather, the central idea is a hoax, but that does not preclude the fact that Phoenix 1) was bored of the industry and his persona & 2) was interested in hip-hop, and wanted to make some for himself.
For twenty minutes we get a sporadically funny look at the industry. Kept nicely on a knife edge in a particular verite style, there's a few moments of glee in the punturing of balloons and of pretension. This is where this film is at its best; in showing us how easy it is to fall into certain traps of fame, the silly little bits and bobs. How idiotic most of Hollywood is.
We darn well hope this is a hoax, as otherwise the frat-boy antics, the mysogyny and general nastiness which invades the film, makes us never want to see anything with the two 'stars' in it again. How are we suppossed to empathise with such vile people?
The last eight mintures of this film are magnifcently boring and unfunny. This is a one joke film ('Isn't he silly?') which gets very, very, very tired. Phoenix's performance is neither good enough, varied enough, or placed in sympathetic or relatable situations enough for us to care at all what happens. The final attempt at emotion is undeserved. And it goes on and on and on and on. Boring things happening to broing people, not funny, the joke had twenty minutes then got predictable, tedious. Of course the camera and compostion holds no formal interest, just wobbles. The supposedly funny and disgusting pranks just bore.
The real condemnation of this film is not that it's real and Phoenix's hip-hop career is awful; it is that it is fake, but not a very good fake. Phoenix has wasted a year in method weight-gain and career break to make a not very good mockumentary. Move along.