Quentin Dupieux is a cinematic rascal. A troll, even. He delights in getting a reaction, and his impish films are more or less shaggy dog stories with just enough bite to get people riled up. So, in a way, my dislike of Full Phil, his bloated-in-more-ways-than-one farce, is exactly what he’d want. Mission accomplished.
But that kind of reactionary filmmaking ultimately ends up tiresome, especially if it’s repeated as often and with such wanton glee as in Dupieux’s case. He releases almost a movie a year, sometimes even two, such as in 2026, where has two productions at the Cannes Film Festival, where I sat through the first and decided life was too short to waste another hour on a second.
Last year, his twee but ultimately satisfying AI-parable, The Second Act, opened the festival, and it at least made me chuckle. Dupieux’s approach is fishing with dynamite, so he’s bound to hit a jackpot now and then. But in the case of Full Phil, which stars Woody Harrelson and Kristen Stewart, who look consistently confused about what the hell they’re doing here, nothing connects. It’s just a series of duds one after another for the entirety of its mere 80-minute runtime, which feels longer than a Bela Tarr production.
There is one good gag
I lied, there is one good gag in Full Phil that made me laugh. It arrives suddenly, then is repeated and underlined so forcefully that it loses all meaning. Early on, Woody Harrelson’s put-upon father, Philip Doom, goes outside for a smoke. His daughter, Madeleine, won’t stop eating, and there’s a snooty maid who won’t leave their suite and who insists on monitoring Philip, lest he acts in a threatening way towards anyone else.
While outside, Paris is falling into anarchy. Molotovs fly around Phil as protesters light cars on fire and fight the police. The air thick with pepper spray, smoke, and screaming. Phil ignores it all and quietly smokes. Why should he mind? After all, the hotel staff has told him it’s just an inconvenience that the locals are acting up.
It’s a terrific bit of surreal criticism that highlights how easily wealthy tourism is no different from modern-day colonialism, and Harrelson’s dopey grin as he enjoys the good life while others suffer around him is a perfect punchline to the bit.
Then, Dupieux brings the joke back, again and again, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he just ran out of material to make this into a feature. Whatever the reason, it robs the one good gag of any power.
Kafkaesque, but undercooked
The framing device in Full Phil is an intentionally low-budget 50s monster movie, where two demented scientists (Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim) hunt down a fish monster, kill it, and then proceed to resurrect it with foreseeable consequences. Madeleine returns to this story multiple times throughout the film, all the while stuffing her face, which somehow causes Phil to expand with every bite.
If you’ve seen Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, you know where this is going. Dupieux doesn’t even attempt to hide the similarities. But the Python gag is well under half the runtime of Full Phil, and as such, a far more concise bit of silliness. Satire is best when it is quick and cutting, whereas Dupieux’s latest feels more like hacking away at an artery with a dull breadknife.
Even as his directing leaves them adrift, Harrelson and Stewart find something interesting in their one-note characters. Harrelson is always good at playing the well-intentioned doofus who might explode at any minute. His frustrations in the film are inherently outrageous (Madeleine pooped so much that the toilet is clogged, and he refuses to ask the staff for help), but somehow Harrelson makes even the wildest plea understandable. Stewart, a terrific director in her own right, does a lot just by sitting there and eating, but also knowingly stirring up trouble once she realizes how much power she has over the situation.
As a short film, Full Phil could potentially be an interesting surrealist frenzy. At 78 minutes, it’s multiple times too long for its own good. Even as a devout Dupieux-head and someone who adores the intentionally frustrating Smoking Causes Coughing, I found none of the delights in this latest effort. It’s overdone, undercooked, and numerous other metaphors that all feel like more work than Dupieux himself put into this film.
Full Phil recently played at the Cannes Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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