Movies

‘Ri¢hie Ri¢h’ and the Search for Friends in Cinema

By  · Published on February 28th, 2017

This is a legitimate video essay. Kinda.

Kentucker Audley is not only a fine actor, writer, director, and editor, and a champion of independent short films, it also turns out he’s a brilliant satirist of the video essay. Over the last couple years he’s released essays on Independence Day, Pleasantville, Powder and others that not only take the piss out of the films, but also the format of video essays and the essayists who make them.

As an essayist myself, not to mention a guy who has watched and posted about literal hundreds of them, I get the self-serious tone that Audley is gently if drolly mocking, and am of course guilty of it myself from time to time. By calling us on our pretensions in this manner, Audley accomplishes three primary things: one, he reveals the thin, sometimes nonexistent line between promotion of subject and promotion of essayist; two, he skewers contemporary criticism’s penchant for the study of minutiae in broad, generalized strokes; and three, he makes highly, highly entertaining essays of his own, like his latest which tackles the riveting financial thriller Ri¢hie Ri¢h starring Macauley Culkin.

Here Audley follows the route by which young Richie discovers the true meaning of friendship – crossing gender, color, social, and class lines in the process – and along the way he pokes fun at the film, the format, and perhaps even us for watching. Check it out, then jump here for more of his work.

Related Topics:

Novelist, Screenwriter, Video Essayist