We're all stupid

When people get wildly excited about an unexciting movie at this film festival, often they’re described as suffering from Sundance altitude sickness. You’re about 4,200 feet above sea level, watching five movies a day, and, film-wise, your “see level” gets thin. Dementia takes over, and terrible things start looking great. On the shuttles and standing in the bathroom line, you overhear people going gaga over garbage. There are two great sufferers of altitude sickness: Studio executives who pay top-dollar for so-so flicks and star-struck festivalgoers, who’ll eat something up if the stars happen to be sitting in the same auditorium.

Finn Taylor’s “The Darwin Awards,” which had its world premiere last night, raised the bar for the second sort of altitude sickness. Critics and studio executives seemed to agree that the movie stinks. But the crowd howled with laughter for the duration, while Winona Ryder and Joseph Fiennes happened to be relaxing in the next row. They play two insurance claim detectives crossing the country looking for people who died the stupidest deaths. (The film’s inspired by the real-life awards.) Ryder and Fiennes are funny, but the movie at every turn is ineptly made. There’s no idea guiding it, just the director monkeying around with his buddies (Juliette Lewis, David Arquette, and the late Chris Penn, to name a few). Fiennes suspended naked in a harness? Not funny. The film needs Preston Sturges's wit. Instead, we get the worst movie David O. Russell never made. Despite this, the lines to get in went around the theater. But all the cheering might be the result of something worse than Sundance altitude sickness. It’s Stockholm Syndrome.