Doobious Sources (2017)

Two pothead slackers running their own “investigative journalism” agency team up with a journalist to take down a prominent political figure and all hell breaks loose. Written by Clif Lord and Tommay Sowards and directed by Lord, the film jumps into the two leads’ investigations without much explanation and just goes for it with the two of them filming everything they do for “behind the scenes”  with both of their point of views going back and forth.  The way this is written into the story works and so does most of the story, it’s just not all that interesting.

A lot of the story is the two of them trying to cover themselves in case of a lawsuit while trying to work with a “real” reporter with dubious methods himself.  None of the characters built here are nice and none of them are all that interesting, they all come off a bit annoying, not grating per se, but none of them come off as people you would want to be around or would want them to succeed.  This leads to not really caring what happens to them or if they get out of their self-created bad situation. In the two lead stoner parts, Jason Weissbrod as Zorn and Jeff Lorch as Reginald both do okay with the parts given.  Working with them as Ky, the actual journalist is Creagen Dow who does okay as well, but shows a bit more interest in his part for most of the film.

There is some over-acting on all of their parts but it seems to fit with the film’s tone and direction.  The rest of the cast is decent, there is just no one to really grab you and make you want to watch the film and pay attention. The cinematography by Stephen Treadway is interesting in that it is mostly through the handheld cameras yet it is not annoyingly found footage-y.  The film takes that way of shooting and makes the most of it.  The characters being video journalists should have a minimal understanding on how to properly shoot video and this is used in the way the film ends up looking.

Considering how other films have done with handheld cameras, this is one of Doobious Sources’ few strong points. The film here is not particularly good or particularly bad, it’s not all that offensive even when tries but it does end on a scene that made this reviewer go “Really? Was that necessary?”  All the weed smoking, swearing, cheating, double crossing in the world did not exactly make this enthralling or all that interesting.