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Stavros Halkias Has Star Power
In Let’s Start a Cult, the comedian updates the early-aughts comedy-movie formula and proves he can carry a project at the same time.
Their subsequent road trip to recruit new members, which comprises the bulk of the movie, is little more than an excuse to introduce a gang of endearing oddballs and drop them into various settings where they can exchange loose improvised dialogue and get up to high jinks. In one scene, he tries to reiterate the obvious lie he told his parents to explain why he’d disappeared from their lives to join a cult: “For the last time, Mom, I was training to be a karate champion in Tokyo, but the day before the big championship, my sensei betrayed me and stole my beautiful girlfriend, Akiko. Like Fred Simmons in The Foot Fist Way, Chip’s misguided blustering functions as a subtle commentary on the absurdities of masculinity, and none of his stabs at charisma ever land enough to make you lose sight of the fact that the joke is on him.
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