Well, I have had this recommended to me for months now by Cece, sooo, let’s see where this takes me. It has a solid cast with Justin Long, Johnny Depp, Michael Parks, and fucking Haley Joel Osment. Sigh. I’m already bummed out.
Wallace (Long) and Teddy (Osment) are doing a podcast about a viral video with a “Kill Bill Kid”. Long’s stache is something else. “Hey, there fellow facial hair aficionado.” This bearded dude is pretty funny, I enjoy him. Wallace is going to travel to Manitoba, Canada. He explains that his podcast is called the “not see party”. Get it? If not, say it out loud fast and you’ll get there. Of course, Wallace shows up to find there’s a funeral for the kid. Wow. He killed himself with his own sword. So while Wallace is taking a piss at a bar in Winnipeg, he sees a letter from a guy who has stories to tell. Well, there you go. “Chug Eh Lug” is written on a cup. Haha, the girl clerks hate American guys. This is done by Kevin Smith and one of the girls was his daughter. She plays a clerk. Kevin Smith wrote it. Humor. Tee Hee.
So Wallace has to do chores for this dude it sounds like in order to get stories. That seems reasonable. I will tell people stories if they will do chores for me. You won’t? Damn you! I have great stories, tales of going bald, of growing double chins, and so…so much more.
Wallace gets there, and Howard is played by Michael Parks, who you know from Tarantino films. Great guy to have. Why do they always portray guys as having the most relieved face ever while peeing in films? he didn’t like the crocheted toilet paper doll holder. This is a nice place. Haha, Howard has no idea what a podcaster is. Wallace is really digging the tea that Howard served, Howard says a Hemmingway quote, and says that he was with Hemmingway around D Day. Howard hooked him up with booze and this is where the quote comes from. Howard still has the bottle, and Wallace says how cool it is. Howard makes a great point, it’s just a bottle, it’s the story that makes it cool. Wallace finds a walrus penis bone and is beyond thrilled.
Howard said that he was lost at sea in the Siberian Sea. They were looking for a shark. The ship sank, so Howard has one of those rescue donuts that keep you afloat. He finally swims to shore and sees his savior, a walrus. He called the walrus Mr. Tusk. Either Wallace is tired, tanked, or drugged. Yeah, he just drops. Howard says “You’ll be alright, Mr. Tusk”.
We get a flashback of his girlfriend, Ally, who is incredibly wayyyyyy too hot for him. She stopped sucking him off and lectures him about not going to Canada to visit Kill Bill Kid. He gets blathering on how when “old Wallace” was poor and a nothing and “New Wallace” is a success, but old Wallace had Ally. This is bullshit, he would not be with a chick that looks like that. Aside from her looks, I hate this scene. It’s Kevin Smith at his bullshit relationship finest. This is the part of Kevin Smith that I don’t enjoy. Sorry to be that guy, but I don’t give a damn about their relationship, talky talky, you used to be this guy, you’re a new guy, I miss the old guy. Fuck off with that shit. Sorry, my buddy Jay likes a lot of that stuff, and when it’s funny, it works. This is why I like to work with Jay and Trenchmouth Productions. Yeah, shameless plugs.
Wallace wakes up and he is in a wheelchair. Howard tells him that a somewhat poisonous spider bit him. Wallace inquires about the whereabouts of his cell, and the doctor supposedly stepped on it and broke it. The venom was traveling to his heart and the doctor had to cut off Wallace’s left leg below the knee. Wallace is all disoriented. He is pissed and Howard is telling him how the spinal injection has fucked him up again, and the doctor removed all the phones. Howard is kinda laughing as he strolls away and says that he is truly sorry for Wallace’s loss.
At dinner, Wallace can’t move his arms due to morphine. Wallace doesn’t believe the spider story, but Howard is sticking to it. Wallace starts yelling, and Howard gets up and walks and bitchslaps Wallace. Nice!!! Howard has been working on a walrus suit, and it should fit Wallace just fine. He says that in order to be a walrus, he would have to communicate as a walrus. Howard wants to know if the man is indeed a walrus at heart. Wallace is screaming and Howard mocks him. Hahaha.
Ally is talking to the camera and talking and crying, and boring me to tears as well. Shut the fuck up……clap, clap, clapclapclap. Teddy is taking Ally to some art bullshit. Teddy looks like a guy I could never hang out with. He just…..nope.
Back to present, and Wallace wakes up and hears his phone ringing. His ringer couldn’t be more annoying. It was Ally trying to call. He tries to call her back, but she is in the other room and it’s on vibrate. He leaves the voicemail that you would expect of a scared person whispering. This film is starting to lose me. DO something to bring me back. Teddy is spending the night with Ally, as we’d expect. Once again, that douche bag hanging with that chick. In what reality are we in? Wallace calls Teddy and leaves a voicemail, but Howard hits him out of his chair. He tells him that if he wishes to continue living, it will be as a walrus, or as nothing at all.
I may start punching things if I have to hear that fucking ringtone again. At least Howard appears to be doing surgery and is talking. Howard talks about being tortured, beat, raped as a child in orphanages. At age 15 he escaped, went to the US, and got on a boat. Wallace is now without both legs and his left arm is getting sewn to his side. OK, Ally was calling like police, and they asked for recent pictures, and she told them to go the notseeparty website. That was funny. Wallace is waking up and he has like webbed hands and is screaming. Well, that is a sight to see. Oh boy. Howard does a voiceover while we see Ally and Teddy looking around at the car rental place and the bar.
Teddy and Ally are at the Detective’s office, and there is no Howard Howe there. Haha, a cereal killer joke. Howard has this whole like Walrus set up with water. He drags Mr. Tusk to the water so he can swim. He was doing ok, then sank, and he sees another just like him, but that one was dead.
Here’s Guy (Depp) who used to be an inspector. Well, he looks very fucking phenomenal. This reminds me that Depp can act when he pried away from Tim Burton’s teat. Guy has experience tracking down this guy who is cutting off people’s legs at the knees. I enjoyed the First Wife joke. Guy believes that 2 years ago, he ran into the son of a bitch. OK, this scene is good, Guy’s story scene. Son of a bitch. My copy of this movie just froze. You have got to be shitting me.
My solution is a total pain in the ass. This will get finished at least. This whole conversation is funny, Howard is awesome as is Guy. Back in present, he has a theory about something with the mouths. He says that a small piece of the leg bone ends up in the mouth. Howard is leaning up on Mr. Tusk, and he’s singing a song. He realizes that Mr. Tusk must be hungry, so he tosses a mackerel on Tusk’s platform. Howard watches and hopes that Tusk will eat, and so he does.
Guy, Teddy, and Ally end up at the convenience store again. They call Wallace, Mr. Mustache. I enjoy the insane amount of syrup behind the clerks. Shit, a Big Lebowski reference before I could even type it. Good for them. We see that Howard ended up eating his previous walrus before he got rescued. Howard’s ass, good job. Guy and company find Wallace’s car in a pond, and now Guy arms them with handguns.
Holy shit, Howard is in his own walrus outfit and now we are gonna have a walrus fight to the death. The others have made their way to Howard’s place. Howard says that Tusk either goes full walrus and kills Howard, or he dies. Howard breaks out of the outfit and has a club. Tusk jabs him in the foot and gets Howard down and is just stabbing the shit out of Howard. Howard seems happy. Now Teddy and Ally break in the room and see this. Ally is crying because that’s what women do in horror flicks….and action flicks…..and sci-fi flicks…..and every form of cinema. Guy has the shotgun aimed at Tusk and he looks excited to be shot, like Dale in Walking Dead.
One Year Later
We see Ally and Teddy go to a wildlife sanctuary. They have something in a newspaper. She calls for Wallace. It’s a fish, and she throws it out there for him to eat. A flashback with Ally and Wallace talking about how crying separates humans from animals. And we see Wallace shed a tear.
End film
Well, that was different, and not in a good way. Sorry, but this didn’t work for me. There are some positives, so let’s discuss them before I get to the issue at hand. This film did have some humor, and I do like Justin Long actually. He is in a few really solid films. Michael Parks was really good. Dare I say it, Johnny Depp stole the film, hands down. When Depp has something good to work with, a good character, he can work wonders. I did find some stuff quite funny. Those are all positives, and I like the podcast during the credits. On the other hand, there was a lot of things that simply didn’t work for me. Haley Joel Osment has never starred in a good feature-length film, and hopefully, someday he does, but I have yet to see one. And no, I really don’t want HJO recommendations because I won’t watch them. Ally was beautiful, too beautiful to be around these 2 idiots, and she is the part of Kevin Smith movies that I loathe the most. She represented it, and I couldn’t stand her character. The story was terrible. They could have made this like Big Fish and I would have been very happy with it, with Howard telling all of these creatures he slayed, and we find out in the last act that he is a crazy killer, and that is still how we could make use of Guy’s character. It could have had a lighthearted approach with comedy, but then go downhill fast, and I would have been fine with that. But I was not into this whole walrus thing, because I dig walruses. They are up there with penguins for me. Aside from Guy, the last hour was mostly unbearable, and I hated that I already didn’t like it, only for my copy of the film to fuck up. I had to spend extra time to get a good copy to finish a film that I wasn’t digging. Slap in the face. Kevin, much like Tarantino may not be able to do good horror. That’s ok. There is no shame in that. Those guys were icons for me as a teenager.
Final rating: 4.0 because when it was good, it was entertaining, the first 40 minutes or so minus Ally was fun. After that, aside from Guy, it was not good, so 4.0 seems fair.
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