Breaking News in Yuba County is a strange crime-comedy that’s both overdeveloped and undercooked. The movie has a stacked cast of comedic character actors and, it’s true, the audience can’t help but enjoy watching these actors in motion. However, since the story builds off of a deceitful faux pas in such convoluted ways, movie goers also can’t help but grow exhausted and impatient.
In their essay “Cinema-Ideology-Criticism”, Jean-Luc Comolli and Jean Paul Narboni speak of a category of cinema which is politically progressive in content, but whose politics can be discounted due to the generic and status quo supporting form. This category is exemplified in Nerve, a film which, just like your friend who speaks about how others “don’t understand”, manages to talk for 96 minutes without ever actually saying anything.