Technically, I wrote this because Gutting sacrificial trash is fun, doubly so when you have a funny anecdote to book end it focused on lovingly teasing your girlfriend, but I also wanted some practice writing reviews again and figured it was best to start with something I have no love for. Plus, too many people seem willingly to overlook the foundational, structural, and ideological issues with this movie through the power of nostalgia.
So, yeah, I’m getting a sick and twisted, sense of joy knowing that the first movie I’m going to write about here is this absolute mess. Though, I must admit, part of my disturbed amusement arises from my girlfriend, equally blinded by childhood memories, desperately trying to convince me that Hank Azaria’s character was going to be the only truly bad part of the movie.
Of course her other girlfriend was sitting at the far end of the couch asking if she really wanted to subject me to something so “torturous” a day after officially applying the same girlfriend label to our relationship. About 15 minutes in she paused the movie, profusely apologizing and asking we stop watching, but I was committed.
So, after watching this… thing, I must ask, how the hell does this have 3.1 stars on Letterboxd?! The plot is a mess, motivations change from scene to scene, and things just happen because thats what the plot needs to happen so the next scene even kind of makes sense; it’s quietly misogynistic, and openly racist & homophobic in that “cute” 90’s/aughts way, aka it’s fine to say a slur if you wink at the camera.
Before I really start eviscerating this monstrosity, I must commend a few elements. William H. Macy’s performance as The Shoveler brings heartfelt straight-man and “Dad” energy this film sorely needs. Frankly, he’s one of the only characters who makes any damn sense, likely because we actually see all his scenes. His interactions with his clearly put-upon but loving wife Lucille (Jennifer Lewis) and his sons played by a young Corbin Bleu and Philip Bolden, paint the picture of a lived life, a character with motivations and dreams, even if they are silly. Which means I also get to call out Jennifer Lewis. Everything Lucille says is perfect, no notes, I want a slice of life show just following this woman dealing with the idiots her husband hangs out with. (Thinking back, Lucille may be the only woman in this pile who is allowed a character rather than being a MacGuffin)
Janeane Garofalo as the Bowler manages to take “a 90’s dude writing an empowered woman” lines and actually make them funny, even when half those lines are delivered to or for a bowling ball. Of course that means almost everything she says is a one-liner with no care for consistent motivation or desires scene to scene. Dang, did I run out of good points that fast?
Oh wait, no, Tom Waits as Doc Heller, Greg Kinnear as Captain Amazing, Eddie Izzard as Tony P, and Geoffrey Rush as Casanova Frankenstein are all delightful. They seem to have formed a coalition who’s only purpose is to coat every piece of scenery they can reach in bite marks.
Sadly Ben Stiller, Hank Azaria, and Paul Reubens were seemingly committed to joining said coalition, but between all three moving the main plot, their own sub plots, well Ruebens gets shoved into other people’s, and a noticeable choice to only have Azaria and Ruebens on screen when they were the specific focus of a scene, particularly in the back half, they just don’t gain admittance. Stiller get’s the screen time, but the choice to film everything with wide angles means the close up over the top reactions he always does have even less impact that usual. Worsened I’d say, by the choice to have him play “Mr. Furious” as Stiller just doesn’t look angry, or it would be more accurate to say, he can’t “act” angry.
Try it some time, it’s hard. I don’t mean pretend to be angry, I mean get a camera and record yourself and try acting angry with the intent to publish it and show other people. It feels awkward and unnatural. And Stiller just can’t, or doesn’t, do it well. So he goes with “comedy angry” which really doesn’t look furious on a painfully close wide angle close up.
This movie is holistically bad. The film is consistently stylized, but not styled consistently, and no, shooting every damn scene on a wide angle or fish eye lens does not count as styled consistently. No one’s motivations make any sense even before they start changing from scene to scene. Most of the cast are portraying overt racist and homophobic stereotypes as though acknowledging they’re stereotypes makes that ok, and every woman (aside from Lucille, who is herself arguably a stereotype but better portrayed) exists to further the plot, or be an object a man desires or wields as a tool before discarding.
At every opportunity this shambling pile manages to stumble into beautifully ridiculous ideas, only to ignore them and choose a formulaic plot with the hanging modifier, if every character was an idiot and made the worst choices possible, but still needed to succeed in the end. However a formulaic plot, even one with such a terrible qualifier, isn’t a low enough bar for me to call this holistically bad.
A formula works because it lays out specific replicable beats to hit. I don’t know if the script was full of holes, they ran out of money, or they realized following everyone’s plot ballooned the runtime too much, but half the formula beats have just aren’t here.
This isn’t “so bad it’s good” quality. This feels like a generative AI movie 23 or so years early.
It’s slop.
It’s “content.”
The creators behind it might have had a vision for it, but they were uninterested in their own creation as a unified whole. They didn’t learn anything, try anything new, explore the world they created. They threw one liners and stereotypes at the plot until it looked good enough. Several of the actors are clearly having fun with it(complimentary and derogatory) but William H. Macy and Jenifer Lewis don’t make Ben Stiller, Hank Azaria, and Paul Reubens tolerable or cece to be overtly racist and homophobic stereotypes.
Honestly, knowing that this thing had a budget of $68 million and all the names it managed to sneak in, seriously, Dane Cook and Michael Bay both have cameos. I almost have to wonder if this was funded as a front, or if it was like an early version of the 2010 movie, Valentine’s Day; something a bunch of bored actors did for a pay check that only only needed a few days of work from each of them.
To put it bluntly, this film is akin to Rex Viper; I’m glad their creators are having fun, but neither is worth the finite time they’ve taken from my life, and at least Rex Viper doesn’t make me listen to Paul Reuben, styled as a wannabe super hero and an AIDS epidemic era gay stereotype, use a slur while explaining his flatulence based super power was in-fact a curse from a Romani woman.
Oh, and, yes, she’s still my girlfriend, I believe her last comment about Mystery Men was “Normally I love a plot that’s 80% holes, right ladies?”
