Tusk

***DISCLAIMER*** The following review is entirely my opinion. If you comment (which I encourage you to do) be respectful. If you don't agree with my opinion, that's fine. To each their own. These reviews are not meant to be statements of facts or endorsements, I am just sharing my opinions and my perspective when watching the film and is not meant to reflect how these films should be viewed. Finally, the reviews are given on a scale of 0-5. 0, of course, being unwatchable. 1, being terrible. 2, being not great. 3, being okay. 4, being great and 5, being epic! And if you enjoy these reviews feel free to share them and follow the blog or follow me on Twitter (@RevRonster) for links to my reviews and the occasional live-Tweet session of the movie I'm watching! It's The Human Centipede...but about turning the Mac kid into a Walrus...and made by the guy who was Silent Bob.

Tusk ? 2 out of 5

I consider myself a casual fan of Kevin Smith.  I like him more as a person who shares my interests than him as a filmmaker and writer (or as someone who can?t take criticism very well).  I can?t watch his old films anymore because the humor just doesn?t have the staying power for me, so things like Clerks and its sequel, Dogma, Chasing Amy, and Mallrats are unwatchable now and completely unfunny.  And don?t get me started on Cop Out.  However, I still like Jersey Girl (George Carlin?s performance in that film was incredible) and Red State might be the greatest film from the man I have ever seen.  But when I heard he was making Tusk and found out what it was about, I was sold because I love really fucked up films.  I was actually really excited to see it?and then the disappointment hit.

Ah, podcasting...just as annoying as blogging.  Wait, what did I just say?!?

Wallace Bryton (who is played by Justin Long and has a name that suspiciously sounds like ?walrus?) is a podcaster with his friend Teddy (Haley Joel Osment).  One day, he heads to the Great White North to visit a viral video star but learns that the star is no longer around and he?s left without a story.  He stumbles upon a mysterious and worldly man named Howard Howe (Michael Parks) and thinks he found something to talk about on his next podcast.  Granted, he totally did but he?ll never get to tell his story because Howe wants to surgically transform Wallace into a walrus.  Now it?s up to his girlfriend Ally (Genesis Rodriguez) and Teddy to locate and save him.  On the way, they find themselves teaming with a mysterious lawman named Guy Lapointe (Johnny Depp) who has been hunting Howe for some time.  Can they reach Wallace before the transformation is complete?

They don't...hashtag Fuck Yo Spoilers!

I love ridiculous films and this one, based on a story that Kevin Smith and his buddy came up with on his podcast, sounded all kinds of insane and I instantly fell in love with the concept.  Not to mention, it?s pretty damn cool that Kevin Smith had the means to make this silly idea a reality.  Not all creative types have the means, financial support, or the faculties to get anything they come up with off the ground and made?so, the fact that Tusk exists is already something cool and I can get behind?of course, just because I think it?s cool that a movie exists or appreciate its existence due to its influence on free speech, creativity, and the advancement of storytelling and filmmaking doesn?t necessarily mean I enjoy it or think it?s a good movie.  I think The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a revolution for horror films but I still think it's a terrible movie.  I also think Pink Flamingos is a bold statement in the world of filmmaking but that doesn't mean I find any entertainment value from it.

Typical guy, polishing his walrus tusk.

Tusk starts out fantastically?for the most part.  The premise is established and built upon terrifically and it feels like it is really going somewhere amazing.  Sure, it felt like a bad mockery of The Human Centipede but I found that film both unsettling and entertaining so I thought why wouldn?t I enjoy a film that feels like a silly parody of it?  Then, to add to it, Michael Parks is giving off an absolutely unbelievable performance and he makes the character of Howard Howe simply captivating and thrilling to watch.  However, it?s not long before the film starts to slip?

However, Parks made the film a must watch, I can't emphasize that enough.

The second the film starts, it?s obvious that Justin Long will not be a sympathetic character.  He?s brash, abrasive, disrespectful, loud, and an all-around asshole.  Within the first ten minutes, I wanted his character dead and gone and that is what makes the film and its story hard to deal with.  Part of the magic with The Human Centipede was the fact you felt sorry for the hell the nutso doctor was putting the victims through.  I had no sympathy for Justin Long?s character of Wallace.  I get that he is meant to be a parody of a travelling American and was there to annoy the Canadian characters but it was so hard to feel anything for him during the horror he was going through because he was so damn unlikable.  At no point is he redeemed either and, as the film progresses, we learn that he actively cheats on his girlfriend.  So, he doesn?t get better, he only gets worse.

I like you Long but, gawd damn, I hated your character.

Secondly, the film has some truly abysmal humor.  I was hoping for a great dark comedy and it definitely has its moments that are twistedly funny but so many of the jokes in the film are hack material.  Such gags can work when you utilize the whole ?it?s funny because it?s really unfunny? kinda stuff that the alt comics love to do (and I am guilty of in my stand up) but when an overwhelming majority of the jokes in the film are cheap shots at Canadians with the intention of being unfunny so the jokes become funny, it starts to make the humor in the film look lazy and weak.

I tried to laugh at this terrible joke but all that came out of my mouth was sadness.

Finally, the film drags itself out to the point the whole joke of it has run its course very early on.  While it was cool to see Johnny Depp show up and play the French Canadian version of Inspector Clouseau, his character quickly starts to wear thin as all his scenes go way too long and all the humor that was in them starts to get repetitive and boring.  In fact, the whole story starts to feel this way as it very quickly starts to drag out its thin premise and pushes the boundaries of making it into a feature length feature.  Honestly, this probably could have work better and a hell of a lot smoother if it was a short film.

I'm assuming Smith got Depp for the film with promises of acting through make-up...
that's fucking catnip to Depp.

And I won?t bother getting into how disappointing the ending was?

And I won't get into the fact that somehow Haley Joel Osment still has a baby's face
when he's all grown up.

Tusk had a lot of potential thanks to an incredibly epic performance from Michael Parks and a strange and very wacky premise.  However, the film overstayed its welcome by stretching its limited premise too far and too many of the other performances are either annoying or aren?t under control within the film?s editing.  In the end, the film actually comes off worse than the film it is clearly trying to lampoon and isn?t a very good start to Kevin Smith?s Canadian Trilogy or True North Trilogy...or whatever it is being called. 

So...so the goal with Justin Long was to make him Norm McDonald's impression of Burt Reynolds?

Vulgar

***DISCLAIMER*** The following review is entirely my opinion. If you comment (which I encourage you to do) be respectful. If you don't agree with my opinion, that's fine. To each their own. These reviews are not meant to be statements of facts or endorsements, I am just sharing my opinions and my perspective when watching the film and is not meant to reflect how these films should be viewed. Finally, the reviews are given on a scale of 0-5. 0, of course, being unwatchable. 1, being terrible. 2, being not great. 3, being okay. 4, being great and 5, being epic! And if you enjoy these reviews feel free to share them and follow the blog or follow me on Twitter (@RevRonster) for links to my reviews and the occasional live-Tweet session of the movie I'm watching! If you see the movie, you would think the title is describing the quality of the film.

Vulgar ? 1 out of 5

Kevin Smith and his View Askew Productions have a legion of fans. With this production company, the man has been involved with the creation of films that have become pop cultural icons and have hit home with lots of people and have remained precious to them. Hell, I like Smith but will admit that I can no longer watch a lot of his films in the View Askewniverse. Thanks to Comedy Central playing Dogma a million times a week while I was in college, I can no longer watch that film and Clerks, its sequel, Mallrats, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back have worn thin for me and are no longer funny. While that sounds like I?m being negative, it?s really just my experience with these films.  I simple don't find them amusing anymore.  I actually have a great deal of respect for Smith because he has the means to make his creative dreams come true and not a lot of creative types have that opportunity. For example, I hated Tusk but I was damn impressed that Smith had the ability to make his idea a reality. But enough talking about Smith because this film wasn?t made by him, only produced. This one, instead, was written and directed by his friend Steve Dave Bryan Johnson?or, as some might know him as, the man with the epic beard on Comic Book Men.

Here's what Johnson looked like 14 years ago...the younger days of his
epic beard.

Vulgar tells the story of the mascot to View Askew Productions. Will Carlson (Brian O?Halloran) is a man struggling through life. His career is being Flappy the Clown and performing at kid?s parties but the problem is that it doesn?t pay the bills, as so pointed out by his best friend Syd (Johnson). Carlson eventually gets the idea that he should take Flappy and make him more adult oriented and hire this new clown, called Vulgar, out to bachelor parties for prank purposes. After putting an ad in the paper (it?s like Craigslist, kids, but made from dead trees), a man named Ed Fanelli (Jerry Lewkowitz) hires Vulgar but Carlson soon finds terror when Ed and his two sons; Frankie (Ethan Suplee) and Gino (Matthew Maher), viciously attack, drug, and rape him. Carlson tries to put the pieces of his life back in order and, by accident, becomes a hero after he saves the life of a little girl. Carlson, as Flappy (not Vulgar), is thrown into the spotlight and it ends up giving Flappy a career where he gets a successful kid?s show. However, Carlson?s past catches up when Ed Fanelli sees his familiar face and wants money in exchange for not releasing the video of the assault?

Dammit, why did I include this screencap?

Looks like a Richard Marx video.

Overall, I didn?t really care for this film. Even with the disturbing nature of the story, it held some potential but was held back by a lot of factors. The first one was the piss-poor quality of the filmmaking. The lighting is awful, the video quality is messy and muddled, and the editing is sloppy. I understand the drawbacks of small budgets but when the lighting is so bad that characters are entire consumed by shadows that you can't see them during intense sequences, it ends up hurting the overall story telling and it quickly threw me out of the tale.

Seriously, has there ever been a person who wasn't already a clown that actually
liked clowns?

The biggest problem I had with the film was the acting from Brian O?Halloran. I?ll be honest, and I know this will piss off the Smith fans who look at Clerks like it is some sort of holy item, I don?t think O?Halloran is a good actor. He seemed okay for Clerks and its sequel but, aside from that, I see a guy who has one setting and it?s the one he uses in the iconic first film of Kevin Smith. Will Carlson comes off not too much different from all the other characters in the View Askewniverse and it made the film a bit distracting to me. Granted, there were times when his pain after his assault was done quite well but the rest of the time, he comes off no different than the guy who is, essentially, the tired joke of how he?s not suppose to be here today and the world won?t stop shitting on him.

O'Halloran just looks like an evil clown when the make-up comes off.

Another issue that became really distracting was the sense that Bryan Johnson was trying really hard to imitate the writing style of Kevin Smith. Very often, dialogue (and this is usually only seen during the scenes Johnson is in) comes off unnatural and like it is trying to recreate the back-and-forth seen in films like Clerks, Mallrats, and Chasing Amy. While Smith can make this dialogue?which is wholly unnatural but often amusing and witty?actually work. Johnson, on the other hand, didn?t seem to have that under control and too much of the dialogue comes off laughably (or uncomfortably) unrealistic. This is extremely evident after Carlson is attacked and violated and is being visited by Syd. The back-and-forth the two have doesn?t sound like something that would really be exchanged and, rather, sounds like some faux-intellectual dribble that a first year film student would write and think he created the smartest sounding thing in the world. It ended up taking the horrific event that happened to Carlson and downplay it, making it impossible to sympathize with the character.

Remember when the internet went crazy because Smith shaved his beard and
news sites reported it like it was real news?  Sometimes the internet has too much
time on its hands.

While many might find the story to be disgusting and disturbing, I actually found a lot of potential in it. What happens to Carlson is primed for unique drama that is emitting from a male perspective that is, in this particular case, not seen in the world of film. The film probably could have been interesting alongside its disturbing side if the script was tweaked but the end result is just a floundering tale that can?t figure out if it wants to be a comedy, drama, a crime thriller, or even a different version of Death Wish or I Spit On Your Grave (but with a clown).

Seriously, fuck everything about clowns.

Overall, I just didn?t care for Vulgar. The story was a mess that couldn?t figure out if it was a comedy or something darker, the lead is filled by a man who is trying to play a completely different role and is forcefully squeezing it into a role it wasn?t meant for, and the film just looks awful. The whole thing felt muddled and unclear over what it wants to be and it results in a film that is hard to watch and even harder to really engage in.