There it sat, for two whole years, staring at me from the Blockbuster DVD rental section, begging me to understand its brilliance, its Clerks-like freshness of direction and delivery. I ignored it. Time and again I went for the huge action spectacle, or the critically-acclaimed ensemble piece, always leaving The Tao of Steve waiting, forever waiting, for the impossible. I never did rent it, I moved away, to a place devoid of Blockbuster's or other rental stores, and there I thought our relationship had ended.
Not so, on a recent and inexcusable splurge at HMV (I spent �13 I did not have, someone break my hands) I finally succumbed to my intense curiosity and purchased this oddball flick, with the philosophical name and the naked women on the front, and vowed to sit and experience it the way I should have all those months ago. And let me tell you this, it's crap. Not crap in a truly bad way, like Gigli or something, more... disappointing. I was expecting Fight Club, with all its relevant esoteric discussion and insight, its way of living sharpened and explained to the hungry masses. What I got was was the cinematic equivalent of a drunken PhD student; the basics are all there, but there's no point to it all.
Basically The Tao of Steve is about a man called Dex, who has pissed his early promise, brains and looks away on a none-stop diet of booze, cards, cigs and drugs. He's living the bachelor lifestyle, and has no desire to apply himself to anything more taxing than part-time primary-school teaching (no offense Rob, Mum). However, his youth, spent reading every philosophy book and teacher known to man or beast, gained him a rare insight into the female psyche, an insight which he has used during the following decade to bed every woman he desires, without the need for the messy "call me" incidents which occur during the morning/afternoon/rest of your life. He is his own God, until dum dee dum dum DUM, he meets one girl and falls in love. Oh woah, his Tao is broken, his past comes back to haunt him etc.
The problem with this film can be summed up during that scene, and in five words, "it doesn't make any sense". None of it does! The film begins at Dex's tenth High School reunion, seemingly to give the viewer the immediate knowledge that Dex is a fat waster, and everyone else has done well for themselves. However, as the only people we're introduced to during the whole film went to school with Dex, its symbolism seems a little unneccessary, not to mention cack-handed. We're never shown Dex when he was young, or given anything more than the smallest amounts of insight into him, so it's rather hard to feel anything for the characters, as they all slowly revolve around Dex's world. The whole film is from his point of view.
He's carrying on an affair with one of his friends wives from school, with no reason. He is schooling a flatmate in the art of The Tao of Steve, for no reason. Surely he's known this guy for ten years, has this never come up? He meets a girl he doesn't remember, and falls straight smack in love with her. For no reason. She's not even that pretty, and there's certainly nothing special about her that the film shows us, so immediately you can't help but be somewhat disillusioned with the way the film is going.
This is the sort of film that could have been great, distributing a unique and well-researched brand of modern philosophy to an otherwise-uninquiring audience, offering them a new perspective on why some people choose to live their life one girl, or boy, at a time, never really settling down. Sadly what it does do is spout the occasional line of fairly-pointless far-Eastern theory at us, while plodding down the road of obviousness. A wasted opportunity. |
