Following its premiere at the Berlinale, and starring quite a few of the festival’s attendees (even if they weren’t aware of the fact), Soda Jerk’s Hello Dankness is a hilarious collage of movie clips and pop culture. Using scenes from hundreds of films, ranging from Wayne’s World to RoboCop 2 and even Sausage Party, the film paints an evocative portrait of Trump era America that, below all the humour and drama, contains an unmistakable anger at its heart.
The clips all blend into one another to form a microcosm for the United States, with the use of Annette Bening’s character from American Beauty feeling particularly inspired given the range of her performance. The end result is a strange collage of internet references, image manipulation, and dubbed dialogue all stitched together in about half a dozen or so acts. Zombies and talking rats all feature in one of the most kaleidoscopic and strange political commentaries ever made, reveling in its internet origins and madcap form.
And yet, the discordant format doesn’t forget the trauma of this time, brought sharply into focus by a brief graveyard scene before the epilogue. Hello Dankness is at once a glorious celebration of internet culture and a sharp critique of it. Beneath the glorious nonsense there is tangible fury at how things got so bad, and how the internet has allowed extreme views to fester and mutate until they find their way to the top level of politics. Soda Jerk address both the significance and shallowness of pop culture, a balance they strike almost perfectly to craft one of the year’s most distinctive cinematic events.
Hello Dankness received its UK premiere at the 2023 Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival.
