Swiss Army Man

Normally I try and entertain you with a funny little anecdote before jumping right into my review of a film but I had such a visceral reaction to this lauded piece of trash that I couldn’t think of anything good to attach to it. Now I know those are some pretty strong words and typically I try and refrain from being that harsh when talking about someone else’s art but all I heard for months was how this latest effort from The Daniels was supposed to be the return to brilliant filmmaking.

I ignored the fact that this looked like the modern day version of Weekend at Bernie’s and also chose to overlook the fact that the directors were douchey enough to refer to themselves as The Daniels simply for the fact that I love weird, oddball, and off the cuff humor. I mean my two favorite films this year by far happen to be The Neon Demon and The Lobster, so if this film would have even been halfway decent I probably would have walk out of theater loving it. But no, what I got instead was a bill from the Alamo Drafthouse that simply said "Sucka!" on it when it came time for me to pay for my giant tub of butter drenched popcorn. It’s no wonder I weigh 455 lbs.

Witnessing this disaster on film literally felt like I was watching what happens when two 13 year olds, who are smart enough to be in an advanced expository writing class, have fathers who are rich enough to turn their hobbies into a money making machine. Who knows, if my dad was rich you might have been exposed to my sequel to the movie Powder called Chocolat: The Reckoning. But alas, this world will never see such greatness.

Anyway, Swiss Army Man turned out to be nothing more than a 90 minute long fart joke. I really wish I was kidding. I mean they attempted to dress it up by showing you a man (Paul Dano) who has given up on life and decided to kill himself just before he is rescued by the dead corpse of Daniel Radcliffe which one day randomly floated up to the shore’s surface. But ultimately when it all came down to it, every scene they wrote was nothing more than yet another random set up to another senseless fart joke. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not above a good fart joke here and there; I mean I still do find myself laughing at Rodney Dangerfield’s "Hey, did somebody step on a duck" joke in Caddyshack, but at some point you have to move on to another mechanism to entertain me. Well unfortunately the Daniels obviously didn’t agree with me.

After a series of misadventures on this remote island, the still clearly dead Radcliffe somehow gains the power to speak and in essence, through a series of random bodily functions, helps lead Dano back home. And it’s at this point of the film where you think there’s finally going to be a big reveal at the story’s climax and everything will all come together. Ha! Silly me. The only thing that happens at the end is, yup, you guessed it, another fart joke.

Now some reviewers out there will try and tell you that there are some hidden themes in this story and for the most part I would agree with that. But let’s be real about what these so called themes are. The Daniels basically want to live in a world where it’s socially acceptable to fart in public and to masturbate as many times as you want to without having to feel ashamed about it. Well I hate to break it to them but we will never get to the point in our society where other people will feel comfortable smelling the release of excess gaseous elements from your body. There are just some things that should be done in private, like farting and masturbating. And please, you can yank one out as many times as you want to per day but it’s probably better for your psyche and your dating life if you cut one to two sessions out of your schedule and actually socialize with other people.

This movie was a complete waste of time and energy and I give it a rating of unbelievably WACK! Avoid it all costs.