Drowning Mona came out in 2000. It was no critical darling, no box office wonder, and we’re willing to bet less than half of your friends have ever heard of it. The good news is that all of these negatives are actually positives since A) Critics don’t know shit about comedy, B) From the research we’ve done box office success has exactly zero correlation to quality, and C) Face it, just about all of your friends are idiots.

Like most of our favorite comedies, Drowning Mona is dark, nuanced, edgy, and gets exponentially better with each viewing. The latter is especially true when you watch it with friends and you can later repeat lines like, “Dude, she’s like 13,” and have your buddy automatically respond, “Yeah. Finally!”

Additional points we’d like to make:

• As much as it pains us to recommend a movie with Bette Midler, Neve Campbell, and Jamie Lee Curtis on the cover, that’s just what we’re doing. None of them suck in this flick, because none of them get too much screen time.

• Casey Affleck is AWE-some in this movie. Dude should really get more street cred for his performance.

• Just about all the really money comedy is dished out by people not on the cover (Affleck, this dude that you’ve seen a lot but don’t know his name, the guy who plays Jeff Dearly, and Will Ferrell as Cubby the funeral director). Needless to say this thing was poorly marketed.

• The use of flashbacks is a totally underrated comedy technique.

• It’s what we like to refer to as a litmus test flick, used to determine if someone has a good sense of humor or a two-and-a-half-men sense of humor.

• Between this movie and Always Sunny our appreciation for Danny DeVito is remarkably higher than we would have ever imagined.

• No business name should ever have “BJ” in the title.

We’d like to believe the movie would be held in much higher regard if it were released today seeing that so many people have come around to Office-style comedy where things are much more subtle. We’re probably wrong, but whatever.

OK, we’ve done our part. If you haven’t seen Drowning Mona now is the time to make a point to check it out. From there you can come back and tell us how much it sucks.

Email This