It always fascinates me to see animated adult comedies that actually make it to theaters. Aside from the works of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, I'd be hard pressed to name a single theatrical release that not only made money, but provided an enjoyable experience. Comedies are usually profitable thanks to recognizable names and low budgets; when the medium is suddenly changed to animation (and especially stop-motion animation), the budget gets ratcheted way up and the cast is required to sell tickets on name and voice recognition alone. Again, apart from movies like South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut and Team America: World Police, it's a genre with few winners. Keeping that trend of almost-consistent mediocrity alive is Hell and Back, a stop-motion animated romp starring Nick Swardson and T.J. Miller.
We begin our story at a crummy carnival-style amusement park run by Brian Posehn (who steps out of his comfort zone on this one to play an aging metalhead who likes to smoke pot); Remy (Swardson), Augie (Miller), and Curt (Rob Riggle) are three childhood pals who spend their time lamenting their crummy jobs running and repairing the rides, wishing for more out of life. After Curt begrudgingly takes a blood oath on an ancient satanic text in order to scam Remy out of a breath mint, he finds himself sucked into the firey hereafter. Remy and Augie give chase, literally delving into the bowels of Hell itself in order to save their friend.
The plot is literally every tired, worn-out "bros on an adventure" cliché in the book. There's three friends; the jerk who's comfortable in his mediocrity, the fat dork who's never been near a woman, and the bland one who talks about maybe wanting to make something of himself one day. They end up going somewhere weird where they meet a lot of colorful characters, including a sexy lady (Mila Kunis) who, shocker, ends up with the fat virgin for some reason. The jerk briefly abandons everyone around the end of the second act, they all reconcile, and everything works out nicely in an ending where everyone simultaneously gets what they want. It's trite and tired and has been done before and done better. Despite the strong comedic talent in the cast (including a slew of cameos from the likes of Dana Snyder, Kumail Nanjiani, Greg Proops, and more), this is no Superbad.
Then again, the plot in a comedy is really like the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae; if it's there, great, but it's not what people are here for. The most important part of any comedy is that it's funny; unfortunately, I found Hell and Back to be the very definition of the phrase "a mixed bag". Anything involving our primary cast amounts to little more than tired frat boy humor, the kind of jokes you see on Comedy Central during the daytime. Yes, scatological humor is the name of the game when it comes to our main protagonists; aside from a delightfully over-the-top monologue from Swardson about what it means to be a bro, I can't remember a single line from any of our protagonists that made me even crack a smile. Early on, Riggle's character suggests they try to solicit oral sex from the bearded lady at the carnival they work at, only for Miller to reply "I'll go get the chloroform!"
Not to toot my own horn, but it takes a lot to make my skin crawl, especially when I don't get the joke. Hell and Back, however, managed to find a way.
That said, salvation came, ironically enough, at the hands of the Devil himself, voiced here by Bob Odenkirk. This character was easily the highlight of the film; portraying Satan as a beleaguered bossman of the underworld (who isn't really quite as bad as the Bible makes him out to be) is hardly an original concept, but Odenkirk is by far the member of the cast trying his hardest here, and it shows. Each one of his scenes felt like a breath of fresh air after dealing with our unlikeable protagonists; even if it wasn't anything laugh-out-loud funny, it would at least be tolerable. Aside from the Devil, there were also a number of comedians making single-scene cameos as his demonic henchmen; simple as it was, there's a recurring gag here involving a demon (voiced by John Farley) constantly subjecting lost souls to his various "punishments" (such as a Taco Bell/Pizza Hut that has run out of pizza) that consistently tickled my funny bone. Had every character been written as strongly as Odenkirk's Devil, my opinion of this movie would definitely be a lot more positive.
To be totally honest, Hell and Back isn't even that bad. There's a few moments here and there that got me, and I really have to admire the animation and art design. While it's not the smoothest stop-motion I've ever seen (this is much more Rankin-Bass than it is Laika), it's still a challenging medium to work in. Animators and artists clearly worked hard building and designing everything that appears on screen, which is why it's a shame that the movie underneath it is just so wholly crummy. While some of the cast provides legitimately funny moments, there's still an entire sequence where Danny McBride sings about being raped by a tree (voiced by H. Jon Benjamin, who naturally does the good work we've come to expect from him). At the end of it all, it's not good enough to watch legitimately and it's not bad enough to watch ironically. It's that middling, bland kind of mediocre that doesn't even warrant a watch. If you've got nothing better to do, I suppose you could definitely do worse, but it's also an objective fact that you could do better.
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