Gentlemen Broncos review

The other night GH and I went to a free advance screening of Gentlemen Broncos, Jared Hess's latest film. I will start by saying that the pre-show experience was somewhat spoiled because I was sitting next to a woman in her 60s who was, inexplicably, speaking loudly in a fake British accent with her companion the entire time. I know it was fake because 1) it was awful and all over the place, and 2) she would occasionally drop it to discuss things like "how those Mormons control everything here." She commented on my knitting bag (Britishly, referring to the British china patterns that it resembles) and in our brief conversation I was so very tempted to ask her what part of England she was pretending to be from. But I haven't worked in public libraries for the past several years without learning a little something called "Do not engage with the crazies."

Seriously. Just don't.

But now on to the movie.

The basic premise is that a nerdy small-town home-schooler named Benjamin (Michael Angarano) submits his sci-fi manuscript to a contest while attending a fantasy writer convention. One of the judges is the pompous Chevalier (Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords), a famous author who is going through a dry spell. Under pressure from his publisher to produce something new, he appropriates Benjamin's work, makes a few changes, and submits it as his.

And there you go. The plot. A bunch of other stuff happens too (like a local homeschooling duo who turn Benjamin's story into an awful movie just as Chevalier's new novel is being released) but it's not very interesting.

Now, I liked Napoleon Dynamite. I thought Nacho Libre was amusing, but not my favorite. This film I liked not at all. It is not surprising to find toilet humor and boob & gonad jokes in a science fiction manuscript written by a 15-year old. The problem with this movie is that it seems a 15-year-old boy may have been at the helm for the entire thing, because all told we had . . .

. . . Count 'em:

Regular Vomiting
Projectile vomiting
Kissing immediately after vomiting, resulting in vomit chunks on the mouth of both actors, resulting in me coming quite close to dry-heaving
Explosive diarrhea (from a python, no less)
Poisoned darts dipped in poop
Poisoned poop-dipped darts that are accidentally shot into a woman's breast
Sci-fi characters ingesting "yeast cakes," which strongly resemble cow pies.
Sci-fi boobs that shoot lasers
Sci-fi boobs that shoot bombs
Sci-fi sight gags involving surgically-removed testicles
Sci-fi bobcats eating said surgically-removed testicles
A female sci-fi character inviting a male sci-fi character to visit her "yeast cavern." You heard me.

It got old.

Also, remember how in Napoleon Dynamite you had a bunch of odd-ball small-town characters who were still, for the most part, believable? Yeah, not so much with this one. The quirkiness is taken so far as to be practically grotesque--from Hector Jimenez's creepy perma-grimace as Lonnie, the wannabe filmmaker, to Jennifer Coolidge "fashion designs" that make her seem completely delusional. (Note: Jennifer Coolidge got the shaft here and she deserves better. Woman gets a dart in the boob, for pete's sake.) There's just no one to really root for, here. Protagonist Benjamin is such a passive wimp that by the time he finally stands up for himself it's hard to care anymore.

Highlights, however, include Jemaine Clement as the pompous, plagiarising Chevalier. I perked up for all of his scenes.



Sam Rockwell is good (if slightly unrecognizable) as Bronco/Brutus, the sci-fi warrior imagined by Benjamin and then renamed and "turned into a tranny" by Chevalier. The science-fiction scenes based on Benjamin (and, later, Chevalier's) imagination were entertaining, involving things like missile-mounted deer. And the opening credits were fun, in which the cast and crew names appear on the cover of 1970s sci-fi paperbacks.

But yeah. Not really worth seeing, unless you're a Jemaine fan--in which you should just rent it and only watch his scenes. I am much more excited about next week's release of The Fantastic Mr. Fox, in which George Clooney will do dapper, daring things with a minimum of poop.