Without a Paddle - At least the creek isn't full of what you'd expect.

In what is becoming something of a trend on this blog, we once again have action adventure chosen from Netflix, this time my account, as the category from which today's film hails.

As cathartic as it is to tear down a movie in a negative review from time to time, I really wouldn't want it to be the ONLY thing I do on this blog.  Having to write a bad review means I have to watch a bad movie, and that's only fun if it's bad in an entertaining and interesting way.  If it's just dull and poorly made, like Alpha and Omega, then all I'm doing is subjecting myself to an unwatchable film I can't recommend.  And I really do want to recommend films here - find interesting stuff to write about and hope other people want to watch it based on my write-up.  If every film I watch is Alpha and Omega, I'd quickly fall into a pattern of "don't watch this" and "stay away from that."  It'd get boring and depressing real damn quick.

I had all the above in mind when I rolled up Without A Paddle for today.  Based on the Netflix rating and various reactions online, it didn't seem like a fun ride.  Seth Green's a good actor, and I liked him in Buffy, but otherwise it struck me as nothing but another mediocre mid-2000s comedy film nobody had heard of.  Hitting play, I fully expected a massive piece of shit movie full of stoner references and piss and shit jokes, the sort of thing you can only get into with a few buddies and excessive amounts of alcohol.

With the movie done now, I can happily say it's OK.  Not a great comedy, not a bad one, not really offensive in any way, just OK.  It happens for around an hour and a half, delivers some good laughs, and it's over without any pain or lasting memory.  I don't regret watching it, even though it's not anything special, so there we are.  If you'd like a little more detail than that, read on.

Three grown-up friends from back in the 80s - neurotic doctor Dan (Green), mild jackass Tom (Dax Shepard) and character trait I don't remember Jerry (Matthew Lillard) - meet up again after their friend Billy dies, and find a treasure map he left for their planned childhood adventure to find DB Cooper's lost treasure.  Dissatisfied with their lives for one reason or another, they decided to go out on a journey in Billy's memory and have one last childlike adventure together before giving into the pressures of adulthood.  Naturally, anything and everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and the trio must fight to survive in the Washington wilderness in what I can only describe a series of "wacky hijinks," eventually learning several valuable lessons about life.

You've seen the story before.  I've seen the story before.  I don't even watch all that many films of this sort and I've seen this story a million times before, mostly in cartoons. It's not in any way an original or interesting plot, but I can't fault the movie for it.  There's around four or five major sequences in the film involving a bear attack, pot farming hillbilly murderers, some hippie all-natural girls in a tree, and...

Before I go on, can I just take a moment to talk about the hillbillies for a moment?  I'm only bringing it up in its own paragraph because I JUST did Tucker and Dale vs. Evil last week, and this is exactly the sort of "haw haw all hillbillies are evil freaks" thing that movie was against.  They both even go so far as to reference Deliverance, which popularized the trope.  I know this one was made six years before Tucker and Dale, but having seen both now, I totally get how quickly the joke wears really fucking old.  Even though there's a bit at the end explaining why they act the way they do, the movie still has an air about it implying that yep, all backwoods country folk are just over-the-top murderous bastards.  Stay away from 'em, city folk!  Don't wanna end up man-raped scare quotes go here, do ya?!?

Sorry about the interruption.  Anyways, back to the review.

...a southern sheriff who lives in Washington state for some reason, and none of them are really bad.  They land a few jokes here and there, and the best most of the rest get are a slightly amused smile.  It all functions about as well as you can expect a comedy film without any major ambitions to function, so it's hard to say it fails on any level.

The characters, too, are largely stock, but they're at least endearing.  They play off of one another well-enough to form the sense we're watching lifelong friends, and pull the right "Oh come ON" faces when called to.  I personally think Green gives the best performance of the three, but that's really only because he's the only actor I know and have reason to like prior to watching this (Burt Reynolds has a small roll towards the end, but I didn't realize it until looking it up - probably because I know jack dick about Burt Reynolds).  All the side characters play their parts without any special flair, but still do a good enough job - yes, even the hillbillies - to pass muster.  Special mention to Bart the Bear 2 as the bear.

(Yeah, Wikipedia pages for two bear actors.  I'm as surprised as you.)

If I had to fault the film for anything, it'd mostly be for a few jokes I personally find distasteful.  Some stuff with pissing and bear shit, but nothing I can really hate on too much.  Outside those two bits (which are at the beginning and end of the film) and the hillbilly characters, there's nothing much in this film that aims to shock or offend anyone.  I suppose the half-naked huddling in the rain bit, or the jokes about being able to see the hippie girls' downstairs might not play well with some, but I didn't mind them much while watching.  It's not a clean comedy film by any means, but it's not intentionally offensive or disgusting beyond a few elements, so...

It's just an alright film, is what it is.  There's an appropriate level of 80s nostalgia sprinkled here and there, they use their soundtrack songs well, and it's got a good message about treasuring what you have rather than chasing something you can never get.  The whole thing is by the numbers comedy with the right amount of effort put in to get you to laugh maybe a dozen times throughout the whole thing.  I really wish I had more to say, but I just don't.  Without A Paddle occupied my attention throughout its running time and made me smile a little, and that's the highest praise I can bestow upon it.

Consider this another one of those "if what I just described sounds like a good time to you, check it out" movies.  Otherwise, I don't think you'd be hurt by giving this one a miss.  Sorry for the brevity, but that's all I have to say without stretching and trying to figure out the true pain behind Dan's obsession with a C-3PO figure.

(Assorted thoughts:

- I've never smoked pot in my life, and I have no intention of doing so, but I am fairly certain based on what I know that it does not make you hallucinate.  And I'm only slightly less certain that dogs inhaling marijuana smoke are gonna die rather than get stoned.

- If all of the bear's scenes are an actual bear, and if all the main actors did the majority of their stunts, then Seth Green's still one ballsy guy for letting a live bear pick him up in its mouth and carry him off.

- DB Cooper's Wikipedia page, just in case anyone's interested in learning about the guy.  Stole a bunch of money, jumped out of a plane, vanished without a trace. S'pretty interesting.)

Not really a whole lot to say down here.  Short review, few busy days, no big thing.  I'll try to make Friday's review a touch longer.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil - I'd be evil too if my name was Chad.

Random.org bestows on us my dad's Netflix account, which brings us to goofy comedies, which gives us today's feature...

No offense to my dad - really, no offense, especially since I know for a fact he reads every post I make on this blog when I link to them on Facebook - but he watches a lot of crackpot stuff on Netflix.  Not because he believes in any of it, mind you.  The reason he always gives is watching so he can argue properly with the crazies should he ever come across them personally.  Me, I don't follow the train of logic; most of the time you're not going to encounter the crazies, and when you do they're just straight-up not worth arguing on.  Not to mention the repetitiveness of it all.  You've seen one guy explain why his Chewbacca roar is really a Bigfoot cry, you've seen all five million.

He needs stuff to listen to while doing work at home, though, so I'm not gonna fault him for it.  I just don't hold with what he puts on.

Anyways, the reason I bring all this up is because while rolling through the options for today, I saw an awful lot of movies I'd REALLY prefer not to watch for today.  I'm not sure how I'd review a documentary on Chatsworth or Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Sightings, beyond just rolling my head on the keyboard to equal the amount of eloquence you'd get from a movie like that.  But, fortunately, the random number god brought me to Goofy Comedies, and graciously let me sidestep such schlock as Scary Movie Five and Bebe's Kids and gave me something at least interesting looking to watch: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil.  Also known as AskReddit's favorite quote-unquote "underrated" movie to recommend right behind Moon (1994).

Boy oh boy did they undersell it.  I largely mean in that every time reddit says something is underrated, I assume what they really mean is either something to the effect of "not underrated at all" or "the most horrific piece of shit you ever did see."  But either way, based off of reddit's constant parroting of this movie's name without giving any context whatsoever to why it's good, I wasn't expecting the film to ACTUALLY be good, much less get me right into it straight off the bat.

The film's basic plot concerns the usual "hillbillies killing sex-obsessed college kids" formula as seen in movies like Deliverance (look at me, name dropping all over the place today) turned on its head.  The hillbillies, stern but well-meaning Tucker and dim but good-hearted Dale, are just a pair of innocent young men looking to fix up their new vacation home and go fishing while just so happening to be born and raised hicks.  By contrast, the group of largely nameless college kids, led by Chad and Allison, are paranoid, distrusting of anyone different, and easily prodded towards violence - especially Chad, who's constantly itching to go hillbilly hunting.  When a series of misunderstandings lead to Tucker and Dale taking Allison to their shack to tend to her wounds, things quickly escalate into multiple violent deaths and constantly increasing tensions between the two sides.

Naturally, of course, this is all played for laughs.  It's a horror-comedy film, and it plays the deaths for all they're worth.  The comedy requires a bit of familiarity with standard horror movie tropes and cliches, but if you've seen even one "crazed backwoods maniac slaughters teens in the woods" movie, you'll basically have the idea downpat.  The sheer ridiculousness of the group's sudden leaps to conclusions and Tucker and Dale's complete obliviousness to what's going on around them are great on their own, but when you have people start jumping into wood chippers and getting nail boards straight through the skull, the bloody comedy's just fantastic.  I was chuckling throughout the whole runtime.

Of course, a movie that just repeats the same joke over and over without variation is gonna get old fast, so Tucker and Dale have much needed personalities and good human interactions.  The relationship between the two of them is nice enough - they movie never makes them out as anything but hardworking, thick-headed good ol' boys who care about each other, never stooping to the obvious "looks like a hick but is really cultured" joke - but what I really like is Dale's relationship with Allison.  Although he's not cultured or smart, Dale has brain problems that make him really good at remembering things and horrible at socializing and reasoning.  Allison, being a psychology student, eventually comes to empathize with him and treat him like a real person who needs help.  It's just really sweet watching the two of them warm up to each other and interact, and it leads to some scenes I'd say come close to being genuinely heartwarming.

(Course, as a bonus, it's nice seeing the psychology major represented as a level-headed, reasonable person whose methods only don't work because of the extremity and oddness of the situation, as opposed to just being straight-up crackpot.)

On the other end of the spectrum, I think Chad makes for a great bad guy.  And no, I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying that - it's pretty damn obvious from his first prominent scene, wherein he tries to force himself on Allison that he's not exactly a good guy.  He's gung-ho to turn survival of the fittest from the very second Tucker and Dale strike him as even a mild threat, and his obsession with hillbilly murder just grows and grows and grows.  By the end of the film, he's just as much of a monster as Jason, creating a psycho axe-murderer from the same cloth said axe-murderers typically chop through to get at the young adult flesh underneath.  Jesse Moss plays a through and through bastard here, and I love every second of it.

From there, I can't think of much else to say about the movie without getting into spoiler territory.  There's not exactly much plot TO spoil, but there are some great bits I'd rather avoid talking about because they're too good to not leave fresh.  Plus there's the matter of me just not having too many other points to talk about.  The film has a good message about not judging other people for how they look and advocating listening to one another through Allison's psychology talk, and beyond that, it's simply a really good, really funny film with some great laughs, great kills, and a really nice emotional center to latch onto.

Out of all the films I've officially reviewed for the blog, I'd say it's the best so far.  It's on both Netflix and Amazon Instant, so give it a try sometime!

(Assorted thoughts:

- There's one scene early on where Tucker and Dale get stopped on the way to their campsite, and by a way of a poorly spilled beer and easily caught zipper, the police officer thinks Dale's sucking Tucker off.  I suppose it's a means of setting up the idea of misunderstandings later in the film, but it feels a little out of place and incongruous to me.

- Thank fucking god the dog lives.  I AM gonna spoil that cause it fucking sucks when the dog dies in movies.  But he makes it out OK in this one.  So there.

- I know I was implying earlier that Reddit always exaggerates, but after watching the movie I looked up the trailer for this film because they said it spoils everything and... well... it kinda does spoil almost every major joke and plot point in the movie.  In chronological order.  So maybe give the trailer a miss.

- The quip game is strong in this movie.  I'm talking Joss Whedon before he decided every line needs to be a quip strong.)

Anyways, mini-review here!  The night before watching Tucker and Dale, I saw another really, REALLY good movie on Netflix.  An animated film out of Ireland called The Secret of Kells.  It's a take on the story of how the Book of Kells (one of Ireland's oldest and most valued national treasures) was created, and it's designed to look like an old pre-perspective tapestry.  The characters are all really well designed, each with their own unique look and pose (I especially love the abbot's long, towering stoop), and the colors in the film are just... look at them.  There are a whole slew of strong emotional moments, and it gets really heavy towards the finish before having one of the most relieving and beautiful endings I've ever seen in an animated film.

So yeah, as a second recommendation for the day, go give Secret of Kells a look.  I personally promise that you're gonna love the hell out of it.