When I first saw the teaser for Gentlemen Broncos sometime last year I was very excited for the movie. All it consisted of was Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Concords) as his character, Science Fiction writer Ronald Chevalier, spouting off nonsense in the most self indulgent manner possible. I knew that this character could pretty much carry a comedy all by himself, even as a supporting player. I was wrong.
Gentlemen Broncos focuses on aspiring teenage writer Benjamin Purvis (Michael Angarano) who attends a fantasy writers convention only to have his story plagiarized by the once acclaimed but now struggling Chevalier. There are other subplots involving Purvis' home life and the movie is interspersed with acted out scenes from Purvis' story (starring Sam Rockwell as Bronco).
It's fairly obvious right away that the movie is co-written and directed by Jared Hess of Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre fame. It's got the same offbeat style and the same quirky type of characters that filled both his earlier 2 movies. While not a giant fan of his previous work I enjoyed both movies enough to not discount his future projects. I knew this movie got really bad reviews but with comedy in particular, my personal taste doesn't always match up to professional critics so I usually ignore reviews for comedies. I wish I hadn't.
There's just not much that struck me as funny in the movie. Clement is great as Chevalier but he's not given much to say that's actually humorous. Being a self-indulgent ass can be hilarious but not without some great lines to back it up. Rockwell also is a bright spot, he portrays the hero in both Purvis' vision and Chevalier's of the same material and had me cracking up a few times but his screen time is relatively small. The rest of the cast just floats along mostly looking weird but not really doing anything funny. It feels like Hess just throws weird looking people on the screen and expects people to laugh at them. It works on a real superficial level but can't sustain much humor for a full length movie.
The movie does have a few laughs here and there but they're pretty spread out. It's mostly full of general weirdness and far to many slow spots where nothing happens dramatically or on a comedic level. I guess it's entirely possible that I just didn't "get" Gentlemen Broncos and maybe there's an audience for this movie out there but it seems doubtful.
Rating: 2/5
No comments:
Post a Comment