The Art of Self-Defense

Lite Club

Far more insipid than I was expecting, TAOSD takes itself too seriously to be a cartoon, yet is too cartoonish to be taken seriously. Starts off with promise but jumps off the deep end before long and continues to spiral into complete absurdity. Horrifically lazy satirical social commentary on "toxic masculinity." Worst of all was knowing exactly where it was heading by the halfway point. Yuck.

Fun satire on masculinity - Fight Club by way of Jeremy Saulnier, though not quite up there with either.

The idea of the movie is better than what is delivered. For a movie so heavily influenced by the works of Lanthimos, it never achieves the status of satirical parable. It opts into being a psychological thriller/comedy. Instead of characters representing differing perspectives of a thematic conversation, they exist as one-dimensional knee jerk reactions. Victims. So much potential, but I don’t believe Stearns was clear on his own intentions. False sense of morality kills it.

It's not bad; the acting, the story and the jokes do actually work - the problem is, it's thin. This picture shows the depth and thoughtfullness of actual good movies (or: comedies), that go beyond being 'a great story', but succeed in telling a story that exists in life. This movie is like a sketch for tv. As a sketch, I would rate it 75. As a movie, not so much.

A funny satire of toxic masculinity that owes some debts to Fight Club. The audience is kept at some distance from the characters through the deadpan style, but at least this movie probably won't be celebrated by the people that it's making fun of.

Basically just Lanthimos + Jody Hill, whats not to like?

I wonder if the director was a fan of Community? (Kick-puncher anyone?) A very black comedy, with very few jokes. The comedy comes from the strange dialogue / character interactions. Hard to recommend to anyone, but easy to enjoy in more doses.

A wonderful movie that can't be recommended to anyone. By attacking the coolness of Fight Club, Matrix, Office Space and the late 90ies head on it becomes a deliberately un-cool movie. And therefore a wonderful study on the power of movies and how bros ruing everything. What happens when you don't allow all the idiots to hide behind their "but it also critiques it" BS while imagining they look like Tyler Durden? (That dude they all see very, very critical). The Art of Self-defense happens.

I wish I knew what the point was, other than to set up the climax.

It might be thematically rich and have an incredibly witty screenplay, but I found the overall rhythm of The Art of Self-Defense fairly predictable. While it does satirize traditional elements of masculinity fairly well, it never fully transitioned into that headspace. Eisenberg's turn from his typical shtick into a "macho man" is quite entertaining, but it's Imogen Poots that has the hardest job and impresses me the most here. I feel like a rewatch might do me some good with this one.

Some great laughs, but it can become boring because of the large amount of time between laughs. At this point, you either like Jesse Eisenberg or you don't.

A quirky deadpan comedy laden with statements about toxic masculinity and feminism. At times these messages feel condescendingly heavy-handed, but it manages to cleverly approach the subject matter. Jesse Eisenberg is just Jesse Eisenberg, but still maintains the charm that has kept him in movies for this long. The foreshadowing tho is too obvious and for all of it's preaching it fails to take a firm stance at the end of Eisenberg's character arc. It had potential to be more, but it's still fun.

(FOOT FIST CLUB)

While it's difficult to properly explain, the comedy in this movie is subtle, and it seems to take itself incredibly seriously, but the things people are literally saying in these incredibly dramatic-esque scenes are purposefully ridiculous, and the contrast between the two had me busting out laughing.

An ultra-dark comedy that riffs on some of the same machismo concepts that something like Fight Club does, but in a much more absurd way. Several laugh out loud moments are the highlights, while the second half becomes bit predictable in its chaos.

Fantastic dark comedy.

Partially successful as a series of sketches surrounding the topic of violence and masculinity, but it looses momentum when things become too ridiculous and everything becomes possible - so nothing can be amazing. It’s a common problem with comedy that relies on absurdism. Nivola’s character was mostly successful though, played with compassion and good timing

Interesting satire, funny but also unsettling at times. A karate school turns out to be much more than it seems after our mild-mannered protagonist decides to take lessons for self-protection and ironically gets drawn into a dark, mafia-like underworld.

The satisfying ending manages to turn a bad movie into an almost ok movie. For the most part it goes after very low hanging fruit with its lazy satirization of toxic masculinity. IMO the film is way too dry to foster laughs, which is a shame, because deadpan comedy, when done right, can be absolutely hilarious. Despite some good performances the movie ultimately fails due to its inescapably on the nose comparison to fight club.

What a great topic for a comedy this would be! But alas, besides a few (few!) mildly (mildly!) amusing riffs on being bros, this is a terrible movie. Cheap production design and images, underdeveloped characters, absolutely inane storyline.

A satisfying punch to the solar plexus.

Starts as a great dead pan send up of masculinity and how the performance of which appeals to disaffected men. Devolves into a bit of a psychological thriller which is competent though less compelling. Would have done well to kept the tone of the first act

karanlığı ve eleştirisi donuk mizahla iyi öne çıkartan, keyifli bir seyirlik.

Jesse Eisenberg plays Raymond K Hessel from Fight Club. Had this come out a couple years later I would strongly suspect it had been written by AI.

I really need more characters to dissect this, but simply put, if you follow the rhetoric these days of toxic masculinity then you probably agree with the message here. There's some truth, but it's not nuanced enough to give an accurate depiction. Besides that, just as a film, it's good. Uncomfortable, usually interesting, some brutal moments, some dry comedy, good performances all around, a little unpredictable. Gets compared to Fight Club--it's not nearly that clever, but still entertaining.

#20#, exp3, rw2, story, Imogen.P!

i tried to enjoy this giving no heed to allusions, or the so-called satire it tries to do. it sort of stands on its own as a quirky comedy. it's weird and off-kilter enough to stand out of the crowd. there are some pacing issues and the core idea might be stretched a bit, probably would be better for an episode of tv series. eisenberg's getting typecast, i guess, but really becomes these neurotic characters he's portraying.

A funny and thoughtful movie with good things to say about toxic masculinity but that overall doesn’t really leave much of an impact.

I love the darkness this film lives in.

This unfortunately didn't work for me. It sucks, because I think with a few modifications, this could have been really well. There are some good jokes in there, and some good story ideas, and even some parts of the ending are well built up, but overall it just felt underwhelming. It felt like it was missing something. Like the characters could have been developed further, or something. Hard to describe exactly what I think went wrong.

Very satisfying dark comedy

& yücel

The style of comedy doesn't always pay off but Eisenberg really has a knack for this kind of thing

Limp and obvious satire

Th Art of Self-Defense is a stylised satire of toxic masculinity that is entertaining to watch, though the film buckles its own themes (and sense of morality) in the third act as it embraces the mildly absurd. The style and dialogue is reminiscent of Lanthimos' The Lobster but without the ambiguity. Nivola, Eisenberg and Poots all play their characters well. Enjoyable if not taken too seriously or at any depth.

the killing of a sacred dachshund. i totally agree with sellis' criticisms--the third act makes stearns' deficiencies abundantly clear--but i just can't resist all these exquisitely-pitched lanthimosy shenanigans enough to give an objective score.

ger; [the art of self-defence]; ein buchhalter wird brutal zusammengeschlagen und tritt darauf hin einem karate-club bei - doch als er in dem nachtkurs teilnimmt kommen ihm zweifel am sensei auf.;

:)

A painfully Eisenbergesque movie. A very slow, not that I usually mind, dark comedy. Casey's character development was quite weak, sometimes off, throughout the movie. But they somehow managed to win me over on the last act, which I quite enjoyed. The overall weird atmosphere kept me interested.

at its strongest when it's matter-of-fact-ly satirizing absurd amounts of toxic masculinity. good for some laughs.

Fazlasıyla özgün, eşi benzeri olmayan kara mizah. Anlatılmak istenen çok değişik bir yol seçilerek anlatılmış. Oyuncular ve oyunculuklar son derece başarılı.

Karate ve öz güven üzerine 1 film. Beyaz yakalı kimsesiz 1 genç, köpeğine mama alınca, motorsikletli 1 çete yüzünden darp edilir. Genç, karate öğrenmeye karar verir. Ondan sonra karate salonunda olaylar olaylar. Kadına şiddeti yüzeysel anlatsa da, konu klişeye kayıyor. Jesse Eisenberg niye ezik rolleri seçiyor? Filmin sonunda, genç intikamını alıyor. Beni kalbimden vurdun. Böyle ölüm vuruşu mu olur aga.

Napoleon Dynamite meets Cobra Kai, but much darker. A dark comedy.

Napolen Dynamite meets Fight Club.

A black comedy that, while pretty heavy-handed in its themes, succeeds because of three strong performances & a kooky sense of humor, it's still a very mixed bag in terms of overall writing & story. While everything does come together in the end, it's perhaps not in the best of ways, & the progressively darker tone might be hit or miss for many. Eisenberg, Nivola, & Poots shine, & their characters are intriguing, but something's missing. It's enjoyable enough, but also misses the mark at times.

Confused politics, that only get more muddled as it goes along, detract from a story that otherwise has at times subtle and on-point metaphors and, at other times, hamfisted comparisons. The cast is pretty good and it is an interesting character study, though.

Sets up so many great things only to be resolved in an uninspired way. I really liked the strange world of the story and its very contorted interactions and behaviors, but this too suddenly changes to something forced and pedestrian in order to fulfill a twist that everyone could see coming but hoped wouldn't be. It sucks that a small portion of the plot could ruin what up until then I really enjoyed, but it set up too much that needed to be resolved as creatively as the movie had been before.

Nope!!

Fight-club without the lols

Nicely weird. A lot of people seem to think is about toxic masculinity. Which only proves how narrow-mindedly some people watch movies by reducing everything to the most superficial and least complex dimensions (political ones for one). This movie is way too absurd to serve as political commentary or look like that's the intention. It's just a really original, very dead-pan comedy about masculine identity struggles.

I expected something a lot different from this. It turned out to be a pretty interesting dark comedy. I enjoyed the pace and the stoic nature, which set up for some good punchlines (no pun intended). It does drag a bit here and there, but has a pretty distinct mood that does ease into that. A plesant surprise.