Fired! Struggling actors and auto workers

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***½

It's pretty easy to get fired up about Fired!, the short, funny and increasingly pertinent documentary from Annabelle Gurwitch, Chris Bradley and Kyle LaBrache about, yes, getting fired. Actress Gurwitch got the ax from no less a personage than Woody Allen, when he found her work wanting in one of his increasingly tiresome theatre pieces. According to Gurwitch, Allen was rather nasty in his choice of verbiage when he "let her go," and she shows us this via a scene between herself and a friend who does a very nice Woody imitation. Then she gets inspired to ask a many other people about their experiences of being fired. From this came a theatre piece, a book and, now, this film.

Our critical establishment roundly faulted the moviemakers for their choice of mostly actors as the subjects. Well, Gurwitch is an actor, so of course she's going to choose from her own field. And her choices--Tim Allen, Anne Meara, Sarah Silverman, David Cross, Fisher Stevens, Illeana Douglas, Bob Odenkirk and many more--prove generally funny and pointed. The very best is Tate Donovan with his story, told via puppets, of getting the bounce from the movie version of Torch Song Trilogy. As with this section, the film team usually finds interesting ways to vary the film, so we don’t get as bored as we might by all the talking heads.

It's when Gurwitch and company move into the larger world (specifically of General Motors and Michigan, Michael Moore territory, though Gurwitch offers her own “take�? on the situation) that her film grows even more interesting and certainly a lot sadder. Her interviewees now include economist Robert Reich and others and, suddenly, what we've been chortling over takes on a much darker hue. Unless you have absolutely no appreciation of actors (and their lot in life), Fired! should make most of its 71 minutes entertaining and thought-provoking.