Special Needs

By Louis Fowler • May 1st, 2007 • Category: Comedy

Since it’s rise to glory, the whole sub-genre of reality television has become fodder for countless, witless, utterly forgettable comedies (EdTV, anyone?) that try to pull double-duty, both as a timely yuk-fest and as a subtle commentary on the instant celebrity culture in America. At least that’s how they try to explain themselves.

But in the end, what it comes down to is that these films are not funny in the slightest. They’re tired, overwrought pieces of tripe designed to make a quick buck on the latest fad. Nothing more, nothing less.

With the exception of Special Needs, which I fully consider to be the first, honestly funny take on the reality TV phenomenon, if only for the fact that there’s no artificial heart or displaced saccharine anywhere to be found. Special Needs sets out to be funny, period, and succeeds on any level. Where a Nielsen family when you need them?

Television producer Warren Piece is TV’s flamboyant wunderkind and he’s just pitched his latest idea to the network execs: a reality show starring the handicapped, both mentally and physically, all put in a house and given all sorts of tasks and obstacles and whatnot. It’s a description that’s about as low brow as you can get, but what director Isaak James has done has made the actual handicapped actors part of the background, and really not even part of the joke. If anything, the handicapped actors are the most normal people in the movie. The laughs all come from the increasingly crazed Piece and his bullying team of sycophantic assistants, who seem to have little to no grasp on the real world, causing anytime they have to come in contact with it to be rife with waves of hilarity.

It was an incredibly smart move for Isaak—sure, to laugh at the disabled would have been the easiest way to achieve a few giggles, but by focusing on this trio and their own psychoses, it turns Special Needs into an original beast all it’s own, and a real comedy classic. It’s relevant, it’s smart, it’s snarky, but best of all, it’s fucking hilarious.

Just bring your own helmet.

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