Anything can happen when Michael Cera wanders around Chile without a script on a mission to get high on mescaline. Or, in the case of “Crystal Fairy,” nothing could happen, too.
Cera, who is a bit too young to be deconstructing his own legend as he does here and in “This Is the End,” plays against his usual lovable indie-boy type. This time, he’s a twitchy, obnoxious drug tourist in Chile, talking incessantly about getting some San Pedro cactus and making mescaline tea with it. After a buzzy encounter with his opposite, a crunchy-granola Earth goddess (Gaby Hoffmann), he and his three friends find themselves continuing on their road trip stuck with her, her hairy armpits and her groovy injunctions to be “in the moment” and eat healthy.
Directed by Chile’s Sebastián Silva, who put his three brothers in the movie as Cera’s sidekicks but forgot to give them anything to do except watch the leads annoy each other, the mostly improvised film never makes sparks fly between its tiresome protagonist (Cera says he did trip on mescaline for the film) or his trite foil. We already knew that jerks aren’t necessarily interesting. Nor is watching footage of other people doing drugs.