Cummings has moved from comedy to thriller with an effective cautionary tale about Hollywood adultery and ambition.
The Beta Test
Adultery meets #MeToo by way of Entourage in the sometimes comic, imminently tragic The Beta Test. Jim Cummings shows his understanding of any poor sap still thinking he belongs to the Alpha Male Club as Cummings did in different ways in Thunder Road and Wolf of Snow Hollow. In Beta, Cummings’ Jordan is a talent agent running feverishly with clients but out of date clueless.
Everything about him is geared for combat: handsome head on a slender build, close-cropped hair, and machine gun delivery. What he is not prepared for, however, is a temptation too good to refuse: an invitation for anonymous sex in a high-profile hotel, with no apparent consequences except of course the shock that he would be unfaithful to his loving, virtuous wife.
After the central sin, The Beta Test moves into thriller territory as Jordan tries to find the elusive mystery lady (he was, after all, blind folded when he sinned). Of course, he is really looking to find himself especially after a partier dumps doom on his profession, which is growing more impotent in the face of a fragmented Hollywood and artists’ growing independence.
Jordan might face his professional demise in the Harvey-Weinstein way if he fails to see the signals when he inappropriately guides a young female in the office or fails to weigh the consequences of infidelity. Cummings plays the perfect everyman, cocky and successful but disconnected from the emerging new woman.
Cummings has forcefully depicted a corrupt Hollywood while he has defined the defensive role men must take in face of the Internet’s merciless data tracking, identity stealing, and lawlessness. Cummings’ hero is this time around for him more aggressive than his other leading men but also more vulnerable.
While some may see humor in Jordan’s slow dissolve into anonymity, I find his disintegration a caution to live a better life and maybe just go offline.
The Beta Test
Director: Jim Cummings (Thunder Road), PJ McCabe
Screenplay: Cummings, McCabe
Cast: Jim Cummings, Virginia Newcomb (The Death of Dick Long)
Run Time: 1h 33m
Rating: NR
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JohnDeSando62@gmail.com
