by rick grant rickgrant01@comcast.net
D- Rated R 87 min
Every year we get at least one stoner film. Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (which was actually funny), Super Troopers, Road Trip, et al. This thrown-together comedy was shot in 2006 and dumped into the market on Super Bowl weekend when its demographic, teenage boys, would be glued to the set. Produced by Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions, the idea was to recreate the comedy magic of There’s Something about Mary, but with more bong-sucking and stoner gags. However, ex-Saturday Night Live writers Fred Wolf and Peter Gaulke, who directed Strange Wilderness, strung together a series of skits that mostly fall flat.
When Wolf and Gaulke gave the two main characters, played by Steve Zahn and Allen Covert, their own names, it was a bad omen. One character is eaten alive by piranhas and another is found cut in half. After that the scenes go downhill. Yeah, when Gaulke (Zahn) gets his penis stuck in a turkey neck, it got a hardy laugh from the twelve-year old boys in the theater. But most of the gags are recycled adolescent jokes and other mind-numbing trash.
The story involves Peter Gaulke’s efforts to continue his father’s wildlife show, Strange Wilderness, after his dad dies. His pathetic attempts to keep the show running only drive away the show’s audience and its ratings hit rock bottom. The TV producer cancels the show, but Gaulke doesn’t give up. After seeing a photograph of bigfoot taken by a famous wildlife photographer, he organizes an expedition to South America to capture the beast and score the biggest wildlife discovery since a rare ape was discovered in Africa.
The ill-conceived mission goes bad right away when his sound man’s (Ernst Borgnine) friend Bill Calhoun (Joe Don Baker) sells the map to another wildlife TV host. But through the miracle of video surveillance he gets them a copy. The team starts out with no money and a big RV. The team includes the stereotypical characters–the fat guy (Jonah Hill), the perpetually stoned bong sucker (Justin Long), another bulbous idiot (Kevin Hefferman), the hot chick (Ashley Scott), and the whack-job (Peter Dante). There are cameos by Harry Hamlin and Robert Patrick, who both probably hope the film disappears into DVD oblivion. Patrick’s character tells a ghoulish campfire story that would make any guy feel phantom pain in his testicles.
The cheesy set was located in Southern California at the Los Angeles County Arboretum which was supposed to be the Ecuadorian jungle. Give me a break, I saw the well-traveled trails that were supposed to be uncharted jungle. Halfway through this disaster, viewers wonder how on earth this cast and crew could get through this shoot and not see it was a complete debacle. The only explanation has to be that those bongs were filled with real pot. Justin Long’s entire role in the film is acting stoned out of his mind. Frankly, I don’t think he was acting.
Movies like this are best seen after inhaling at least two bong-fulls of weed. Even imagining one is stoned doesn’t work. Still, there are a few funny gags and Zahn’s wacky narration to his animal footage is funny. But most of the jokes bomb and the filmmaking is amateurish and flawed. Undoubtedly, the DVD will end up in the $1 bin at Wal-Mart.
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