BEFORE: I'm up in Massachusetts today, because my mother's having a medical procedure done to correct her heart rate. I won't get into the details, because it's her medical business, not mine. But I'm here standing by for moral support, or in case anyone needs a transfusion or something. That's how I roll, sometimes I just hang out at the hospital in case anyone needs a transfusion or one of those organs I've got two of.
Thematically I'm still in colonial America, though I'm headed west with the trailblazers and pioneers. Linking from "The Crucible", Winona Ryder was also in "The Darwin Awards" with Kevin Dunn (last seen in "Unstoppable").
THE PLOT: A road comedy about two guys whose mission is to beat Lewis and Clark.
AFTER: Well, this was pretty disappointing, and not just because I expect better from a director like Christopher Guest. This film was made after "This Is Spinal Tap", but before his other mockumentaries like "Best in Show" and "A Mighty Wind", so maybe the best thing I can say about it is that it possibly prompted him to return to that genre, where his improv comedy troupe's humor works a lot better.
Instead, in the absence of freeform improv, the film resorts to common slapstick. You can almost guarantee that in every scene someone will fall out of a tree, or get hit on the head with a rock, or just plain fall down drunk. It's humor of the lowest common denominator. OK, some of the injuries are a little inventive, but the situations are all just so forced - a man is very protective of his wife/slave girl, and threatens to kill any man that looks at her. Gee, I wonder if that very same situation will come up later in the film?
The national parks make for nice scenery, but the special effects, and I use the term very loosely, do not. The rapids scene in particular - there's not even much of an attempt to hide the fact that the main actors were filmed in fake canoes, nowhere near water, with scenes of rapids matted in behind them. I'm not saying the actors should have been put in jeopardy on a raging river, but some better solution should have been proposed.
This film wanted to have tone similar to a Mel Brooks film, but no one really captures that tone like the Brooks-meister himself. Of course there were other explorers, besides Lewis and Clark - but didn't we already know that? The film wants to put the main characters on a par with the famous ones, but it should have had a title card at the end to tell the audience what "happened" to these characters, why they never became famous.
Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for a silly comedy today - but Mom's surgery went well, so that's something. Now I've got some time to kill tonight, fortunately I brought tons of stuff to read on the train and at the hospital, plus I've got a tape full of "Storage Wars" episodes, so maybe it's time for me to meet the cast of "Storage Wars: Texas".
Starring Chris Farley (last seen in "Black Sheep"), Matthew Perry, Eugene Levy (last heard in "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian"), Kevin Dunn (last seen in "Unstoppable"), Bokeem Woodbine (last seen in "3000 Miles to Graceland"), Christian Clemenson (last seen in "Legal Eagles"), with cameos from Don Lake and the voice of Harry Shearer (last heard in "The Simpsons Movie").
RATING: 2 out of 10 canoes
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