We Need to Talk
GLOBAL DIGITALAlcohol as social lubricant will never be lost on the middle-class dynamic dramatic features retreat to when other ideas are spent. But for those too young to drink and vent their frustrations, video games are probably the same. Audiences will have to reclaim alcohol for themselves when they settle into We Need to Talk, not to be confused with a feature by the same name about a couple engaging with one another’s extramarital affairs. No. Instead, We Need to Talk has an alumnus of pop band Big Time Rush turn his hand to leading performances – particularly that of a streamer apologising in the opening moments. Art imitates life, clearly.
Generic alt-pop tracks, a reference to the NES and an “Achievement Award” for “Best Gamer” are all the immediate, telling signs that director Todd Wolfe both understands the nostalgia factor and hates his target audience all the same. From a square random block Super Mario coffee cup without a handle to a groan-inducing bit of horror acting from leading man James Manslow. His performance does not benefit him and certainly not the movie. We Need to Talk has successfully captured why people hate the gaming community by making Manslow, the Great Scott Gamer, into a scummy rendition of trash talk, poorly conceived notions of reality and a failure to break away from playing Overwatch.
Irritating at best, Manslow parades around a house adorned almost entirely in his own merchandise. His wife makes him Mario-shaped coffees as he lives the gamer lifestyle. The incel fantasy put to screen, it would seem. Manslow and Wolfe are so useless in what they attempt to do here. The girlfriend character, which appears to be a punishment for Christel Khalil, is referred to as “girlfriend” rather than a name. We Need to Talk, somehow, captures that gaming community feel that still plagues online circles. Man babies swearing at children while they critique those paying attention to them, their millions of followers a drop in the ocean compared to the mighty and frequent lack of self-awareness Manslow and Wolfe display. They forget almost entirely that they need to show something that isn’t gaming every now and then, wrapping up a non-existent story about ten minutes before the end.
If anything, We Need to Talk compartmentalises the waste of time gaming can be. Both good and bad. Neglect of family values, a refusal to live a healthy social, physical and mental life paraded around as a heroic treat for those famous enough to capture the streaming lifestyle instead of a barbaric and senseless waste of life. We Need to Talk is a horrific waste of time, but at least it clocks in at under 90 minutes. Anything more would have been clutching at straws. An incredible waste of time and energy to sift through the collection of barely pieced-together scenes, most of which flutter back and forth between man cave to man cave and the shoehorning of “gamers are family” message that doesn’t belong in this feature, not just because it is rarely true, but because Wolfe has no idea what that means beyond having a sentimental note for his empty feature.