'Zero Motivation' jumps around a lot for a military comedy
<b>Mini-review: 'Zero Motivation'</b>
Talya Lavie's military comedy "Zero Motivation" has been aptly described as "Private Benjamin" meets "M*A*S*H*" meets "Office Space," and that's a fair description of the subject and style the Israeli filmmaker employs in her third feature, a crazy, lumpy mix of feminism, supernatural possession, attempted military rape, friendship and brainless bureaucracy.
Structured in chapters, "Zero Motivation" tells us about the lives of several female conscripts in the offices of the Israel Defense Force, only one of whom gets her own voice-over narration to explain stuff.
She's Zohar (Dana Ivgy) a Kibbutz kid with a big attitude against authority figures like Rama (Shani Klein), the commanding officer whose dreams of promotion constantly get undermined by her staff of unmotivated women.
Daffi (Nelly Tagar) wants to be transferred to her ideal destination assignment in Tel Aviv, and breaks down into hysterical sobbing when that doesn't happen, prompting Rama to ask, "How can you cry like this when soldiers are dying?"
Why? Because Daffi is a girl?
"Zero Motivation" presents a tough challenge in finding the right comic/dramatic tone for this material to work, and Lavie seldom hits it.
Take the scene in which a new recruit, rejected by her army boyfriend, cuts her stomach open with a box cutter and bleeds to death on her cot. Then the dead girl shows up and climbs into bed with Irena (Tamara Klingon), who understandably goes a little batty.
It's daring for a movie to tackle so many subjects and allow them to wander all over the tonal landscape. But the result makes for an uneven experience that feels something like a movie shot accidentally using the first-draft of a screenplay.
Lavie has a lot of provocative ideas in the oven here, most of them tend to be half-baked.
"Zero Motivation" opens at the Music Box Theatre, Chicago. In Hebrew with subtitles. Not rated; contains nudity, sexual situations, course language, violence. 90 minutes. ★ ★