BEFORE: Rescheduled from umm, yesterday, this is the loose sequel to "Tusk", the second in Kevin Smith's Canadian trilogy (third is yet to come) with Johnny Depp and most everyone else carrying over.
THE PLOT: Two teenage yoga enthusiasts team up with a legendary man-hunter to battle with an evil presence that is threatening their major party plans.
AFTER: It's slightly better and less disgusting than "Tusk", but honestly this is still terrible. I can't quite decide if it's supposed to be a send-up of comedy/horror films like "Gremlins" and "Ghoulies" or if it's meant to be taken seriously, and is just ill-advised from top to bottom. The creatures are dumb, the puns are terrible (a yoga instructor with the last name "Bayer" = Yogi Bayer) and the nepotism is even worse.
Look, I get that people like to make movies with their friends and family - Kevin Smith and Johnny Depp probably had a lot of fun acting in a movie with their teenage daughters, and wives and ex-wives also played along. But making your daughter the central character in a movie is not a great idea if she has no experience or ability as an actress, or a singer. There's a certain kind of blindness involved with being a parent, the blindness that makes you put your kid's scribbled drawings up on the refrigerator, even if they're terrible, because to you, they came from your kid's hand, so they might as well be Picasso paintings. Maybe Smith should have sprung for a few acting (and singing) lessons before casting his own daughter, or been more aware that he couldn't possibly be an impartial judge of her (lack of) talent.
It was fine when she (and Depp's daughter) were background characters in "Tusk", playing socially rude and disconnected, phone-addicted teens. That seems like they could hold up those characters for five minutes, tops, but making them the STARS of the next picture? Bad, bad idea. Neither has the ability to deliver a line of dialogue either coherently or believably, so I was aware at every single moment that this person is an actress, and the daughter of the director to boot.
I like the Canadian humor, though, it's a nice throwback to the classic days of SCTV and "Bob & Doug McKenzie" (kids, ask your parents) and every single shot here contains something Canadian, whether it's a wall of maple syrup for sale, or a hockey-themed breakfast cereal ("Pucky Charms"), well you get the idea. The rest is a bunch of nonsense about Canadian Nazis and evil tiny killer beings made of sausage and bratwurst that were grown in a lab. Satanists, Brat-zis, a hockey golem (shouldn't that be a "goal-em", eh?), they're all grist for the mill, but might as well be a Chucky doll or a swarm of killer bees in the end.
I'm soorry aboot this, but Kevin Smith is hereby banned from the Movie Year until further notice, or until he makes another film that doesn't star his own daughter in the lead role. Johnny Depp shines once again as ex-detective Guy Lapointe, but the rest is just plain nonsense. Oh, the hu-manatee.
Also starring Harley Quinn Smith, Lily-Rose Depp, Justin Long, Genesis Rodriguez, Haley Joel Osment, Ralph Garman, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, Ashley Greene, Harley Morenstein (all carrying over from "Tusk"), Tony Hale (last seen in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip"), Natasha Lyonne (last seen in "Sleeping with Other People"), Vanessa Paradis, Adam Brody (last seen in "Lovelace"), Austin Butler, Tyler Posey (last seen in "Maid in Manhattan"), Kevin Conroy (last heard in "Superman/Batman: Apocalypse"), Sasheer Zamata, with cameos from Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes, Stan Lee (last seen in "Thor: Ragnarok")
RATING: 3 out of 10 celebrity impressions
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