A fading television host, a shady producer and three bratty junior crew members walk into a hostel in rural Argentina. The setup – five self-involved New Yorkers in a sleepy, modest, provincial town to film “a whole new series on subcultures around the world” – practically begs for a punchline, or at least some fizzy, kinetic chaos.
Magic Farm, Argentine-Spanish film-maker Amalia Ulman’s second feature (after 2021’s El Planeta), certainly tries to stir the pot, throwing its characters together into a hodgepodge of strange and lightly surreal situations. But for all its digressive meetups and self-assured one-liners – “maybe you should stop taking so much ketamine,” etc – it can’t land the joke.
