By Marie Straub
Jared Hess does comedy in a very specific way. Audiences loved him for it when he brought
Napoleon Dynamite to their screens, while some critics scratched their heads and asked why.
Nacho Libre, his next cinematic foray, was decidedly less popular, but still drew fans while a growing number of critics joined ‘team head-scratch’. His latest offering,
Gentlemen Broncos, already has critics jumping up and down saying ‘I still don’t get it!’ and ‘See, I told you so!’ all at the same time. They’re not enthused. Yet, I’m pretty certain that
Gentlemen Broncos will still earn some big fans, although in all likelihood, decidedly less than the number that cheered for Napoleon. Why, one may ask? It is because there are very few filmmakers today making work so blatantly aimed at Generation Y. Blatant to the extent that any other generation is going to miss the point entirely and, in all likelihood, hate the film. It is little wonder that all of Hess’s films are set in out-of-touch, small town worlds – something Generation Y, priding itself on its global connectedness, finds particularly archaic and amusing. It’s the ‘so close and yet so far’ aspect. It’s what makes you laugh when you see someone with a cellphone the size of a brick – because while not so far away in years, that brick seems whole lifetimes away in terms of technological advancement. Also, in terms of the subject matter which Hess chooses to send up, he is looking straight at Generation Y kids. With
Napoleon Dynamite, the swipe was broad – anyone who grew up in the 80s recognised so much of the ‘uncool’ of their past, and yet it was presented in all its mundanity. Rather than trying too hard, this depiction seemed not to try at all, while its characters did, and therein lay the humour. With
Nacho Libre, Hess’s reach narrowed to kids who had been wrestling obsessed in the 80s – I remember being invited to WWF (it was still called that in those days) chips and Oros parties where there were at least three boys who would swear blind that the wrestling they were watching was 100% real.
Nacho Libre laughed lovingly at those now grown-up boys and anyone who knew them. With
Gentlemen Broncos, the field has been narrowed yet again… now the focus is on science fiction geeks.
The film follows the story of Benjamin Purvis (Michael Angarano) a young and not so world-wise home-schooled adolescent whose only passion is writing science-fiction novels. He lives with his mother, Judith (Jennifer Coolidge), an aspiring nightgown designer who works as a nightgown saleswoman and makes popcorn balls, which Benjamin has to sell, to help make ends meet. She sends Benjamin off to ‘the best writers’ camp in Utah’ telling him to, “Remember who you are and what you stand for”. He befriends Tabitha (Halley Feiffer), a would-be romance novelist who writes French mysteries about a stable hand named Pierre and borrows money for tampons which she then spends on snacks, and Lonnie, a self-acclaimed filmmaker who has made 83 films, although some are just trailers. At the festival he not only gets to meet his idol, sci-fi legend, Dr Ronald Chevalier (Jemaine Clement of
Flight of the Conchords fame) but gets to take his class about ‘The Power of the Suffix’. He is disappointed to learn that the extent of Chevalier’s wisdom amounts to adding –onius, –ainous, or –anous to names to give them the necessary weight, and declaring that one should write for the money, because “in the future, they won’t remember our writing”. Nonetheless, he hands in the copy of his manuscript,
Yeast Lords: The Bronco Years (italics), in the hopes of getting published. Chevalier, who is fast running out of ideas and is being put out to pasture by his publisher, loves what he reads and decides to steal Benjamin’s work. He makes a few minor changes and publishes them as
The Chronicles of Brutus and Balzaak. Benjamin, completely unaware of this, gives Lonnie the rights to make his film into a full-length feature, with approximately no budget and even less talent. Not only is Benjamin’s story being brutalised by Lonnie, but then he discovers that it has been stolen and made decidedly gay by Chevalier. Will he be left to sell his mom’s popcorn balls for life?
From the credit sequence line-up of bad fake sci-fi book covers, it was clear that this film was going to offer one the opportunity to laugh at a special sector of geekdom. That said, if you are not closely acquainted with said sector, you might not find this film so funny. Personally, there were some diarrhoea and vomit moments that I really could have lived without, and I felt that Hess had lost the focused mundanity that made
Napoleon Dynamite so brilliant. Still, there were great moments. Jennifer Coolidge is stellar as Benjamin’s popcorn ball-making mother, who takes nightgown design to new and truly terrifying levels. Sam Rockwell is, as usual, highly entertaining as Benjamin’s hero, Bronco, as we see his story come to life, complete with one gonad being taken for ‘research’, and then getting twisted by Chevalier, with Rockwell becoming Brutus (in pink, I might add). Anyone who has had to sit through a class on gender and science fiction, or has just read enough bad science fiction in their lives, will find it hard not to laugh at the film’s send up of the much talked about link between the two subjects. Chevalier is always creating sci-fi hordes of women who shoot stuff from their ‘chest fronts’ (Judith’s way of saying ‘nipples’) and they actually managed to insert the line: “Take me to your yeast factory” into this film. Clement’s Chevalier is a triumph, and by far my favourite part of the film. This narcissistic sci-fi writer who paints his own covers (so often resembling himself… just with breasts) and has run out of ideas (after all, where does one go after creating a species ‘who rupture the crust with their mammory cannons’) is a bastardised mix of George Lucas, (without the money and success) and Spock. The resulting pseudo-intellectual who is too attached to his Bluetooth headset to ever take it off is hilarious. In addition, if there were an
Oscar® for finding the weirdest-looking cast on planet earth, Hess would take it, hands down.
In the end, this is a film that (like
Napoleon Dynamite) deals with those years of innocence when one still believes in people, often to your own detriment. The years when one would never think that your sci-fi idol would steal your story. Benjamin’s world is somewhere between the completely crazy and completely mundane, and that’s where Hess is at his best, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, within that, he has forgotten that one needs characters to love.
Napoleon Dynamite had Napoleon, Deb and Pedro.
Gentlemen Broncos has… just Benjamin, really. His friends, Tabitha and Lonnie, are such unspeakable human beings you can’t help but hate them, and his mother and his guardian angel, Duffy are just too crazy. This time round, my vote is too much crazy and not enough mundane.
Two stars. Unless you have an above-average obsession with science fiction. Then call it three. And if you know the kind of people who will get into a heated debate about the naming of troll colonies, you will not want to miss this one.
Gentlemen Broncos is showing at Nu Metro cinemas from 28 May 2010.