Cinematical

What do war, famine, disease and poverty have in common? They're four of the few things in life less funny than The Doorman, an excruciating, run-for-the-hills mockumentary about a famous international gatekeeper to ritzy nightclubs. Think Borat with 99 percent less ingenuity and humor. And, in fact, keep thinking about Sacha Baron Cohen's befuddled Kazakhstani journalist, or fluffy clouds on a warm summer day, or your first kiss, or anything else that makes you smile, as conjuring up memories of happier experiences gone by is the prime means of enduring such across-the-board ineptitude.

The dolt at the center of this fiasco is Trevor (Lucas Akoskin), a doofus with an ambiguous European accent, an ego the size of the Pacific Ocean, a taste for overblown threads, and a predilection for Yogi Berra-isms. "I know people. And more importantly, I know people who know me," is typical of Trevor's self-consciously dumb dialogue, though he's not alone in delivering leaden bon mots, as evidenced by one doltish woman's claim that "The Doorman is God, really." Which, I guess, makes me an unrepentant atheist.

Director Wayne Price's debut is, to put it gently, on a par with your average high schooler's latest YouTube-uploaded amateur movie, except that here, the budget is just big enough to convince minor celebs like 311 to momentarily play along with the central ruse that Trevor is for real. The fact that he's not an actual doorman is clear form the outset, but the film's inability to sell its farce as authentic isn't the problem; a wholesale lack of laughs is. During The Doorman, Trevor brags about his importance, treats clubbers with flirtatiousness (if they're hot) or disinterest (if they're not), and parades about from one nondescript location to another as if deserving of the camera's rapt attention. Price briefly appears on screen selling the idea of a Trevor documentary to a loudmouthed producer, but his pitch - and the ensuing conditional agreement - is so feebly staged that one immediately senses a lack of basic preparation on the part of the filmmakers, who seem to have concocted their concept on a whim and then spent more time nabbing shots of Akoskin at fashion shows, in backstage dressing rooms, and at trendy hotspots than on formulating amusing scenarios or a cohesive narrative spine.

The Doorman's idea of comedy is to have Trevor demand compensation for the documentary and then agree to a $110 fee, to have him attend yoga classes and then fall down like a klutz, and to watch him visit a recording studio dolled up like an '80s glam rocker and attempt to sing. Describing such bits, however, doesn't do justice to their awfulness, as Price's clumsy orchestration of virtually every scene means that any slight traces of wit are squashed by lousy camerawork and rhythm-less edits. Whereas Borat generated outrageous, socially volatile tension from placing its ludicrous fictional subject into real-world situations and letting the fur fly, Price's film doesn't have the courage or ingenuity to operate without a net, its every participant in on the one-note joke. The result is a train wreck of wink-wink conversations and pratfalls in which nothing unexpected occurs - save, that is, for the eventual arrival of Peter Bogdanovich, who chats with Trevor over dinner and, in the process, sullies his good name even worse than What's Up Doc? did.

Trevor is given little to do throughout this debacle, and thus even though he's the titular character, the film eventually finds it necessary to pad out its 77-minute runtime by briefly concentrating on another doorman, a rival named Fabrizio who's comfortable admitting that during his pro-basketball career in Italy, he used a steak and a hole in the wall for self-gratification purposes. Since Fabrizio isn't any more amusing than Trevor, however, he disappears from sight almost as quickly and randomly as he appeared, thus returning the focus to Trevor's habit of separating sexy women from their boyfriends at the velvet rope. So desperate is The Doorman that it quickly falls back on the age-old standby of making unsubtle cracks about gayness, first by having Trevor don a cowboy hat while walking underneath a Brokeback Mountain billboard, and later by having Queer Eye for the Straight Guy's Thom Filicia express doubts about the doorman's hetero orientation. It's not clear, however, what's sadder - the latent homophobia of these scenarios, or the fact that Price and Akoskin think a Queer Eye cameo is something other than outdated and lame.