Review: Tusk

Justin Long is a nerdy but arsehole-ish podcaster who hosts ‘The Not See Party’ (apparently pronounced ‘Nazi Party’, because…Kevin Smith failed high school, maybe?) with his buddy Haley Joel Osment (yep!). As part of the podcast, Long travels to all kinds of places to follow up on viral video stories and make fun of the people who have made or starred in them. He’s headed to Canada to visit ‘Kill Bill Kid’ but learns when he gets there that the Kid has committed suicide. He thinks the trip has been a bust, when he comes across an interestingly weird note on a urinal notice board (?) at a bar, from a supposedly lonely old man promising interesting and wild tales of seafaring adventures. Because Long is a movie character, he thinks it’d be a great idea to check this story out, and winds up at the abode of old windbag Michael Parks, whose interior decorating mostly consists of animal trophies and other macho but weird oddities. Unfortunately, the longer the old man talks, and the more tea Long drinks, the drowsier her gets, until he completely fades out. When he awakens, he finds that his legs have been amputated! Parks claims it was a spider bite and that a doctor (whom he won’t let Long see) has amputated his legs, sedated him and suggested he rest up at Parks’ house. Long is suspicious, and soon finds out that Parks is a complete loon who has a very peculiar repurposing of Long’s body in mind! Genesis Rodriguez plays Long’s way too-hot girlfriend back home, whilst a very famous, unbilled movie star (you’ll recognise him immediately unless you’re incredibly myopic) turns up as an idiotic, French-Canadian detective.

 

After the commercial buddy movie sell-out “Cop Out” and the strangely unenlightening misfire of “Red State”, writer/director Kevin Smith (“Dogma”, and a bunch of stuff that isn’t as much fun as “Dogma”) takes to bringing a podcast episode to the big-screen with this 2014 flick that might be even worse than his two previous outings. Supposedly based on a true story, the actual truth is that this is merely a big-screen expansion of a podcast episode centred around Smith finding a bizarro classified ad. He has thus turned the finding of that ad into a fictional film where the ad isn’t the same one that he talked about on the podcast! (The one in the podcast stated that the person needed to dress like a walrus and be fed fish. Here the poor sap is unawares) Not only that, but the person who originally placed the ad fessed up to it being a prank anyway. I’m sorry, but that’s a pissweak excuse for labelling something a ‘true story’, Kevin. The film itself is a failure, an unfortunate stretching out of a fun, but incredibly thin story idea. There’s simply not enough material here for a feature length film, and the longer it goes on, the more obvious this is.

 

The performances bar one are pretty terrific (it’s some of the best work Michael Parks has ever done), and the Robert Kurtzman FX/makeup provide a very funny visual (He’s the K in KNB EFX, who have been around for decades). I also liked something that was the one thing that worked for me with “The Human Centipede”: The evil scheme makes absolutely no sense, and nor should it. The guy is nuts, and he’s doing a nutty thing because of his general nuttiness. That’s all. I kinda liked that lack of real explanation. Anything else would’ve likely disappointed. Still, it’s not nearly enough to make the film worthwhile, though Parks’ house interior is hilariously overstuffed with macho animal trophies. It’s a one-joke movie, though, better suited to a segment in a horror anthology movie. It works up to a certain point (if typically talky for a Kevin Smith film, which may not be to your liking), but then it’s all played out, pretty much and with far too much screen time left to go. And who the fuck posts an ad at a urinal? Who the fuck answers an ad they see at a urinal? Not a smart person, that’s for sure. Also not helping matters is one bit of self-indulgent buffoonery from an uncredited but blatantly obvious eccentric star, who mugs mercilessly and heavily-accented, to negative gain. You’ll want to slap the guy in question silly, and then slap Smith for letting him run all over the film.

 

I just don’t know what the fuck Smith was thinking here, if he was just having a lark, perhaps he should’ve just kept it to his inner circle, because it’s not funny enough to the rest of us. Pretty lame, really, and even the “Degrassi” jokes aren’t funny. Even worse are the ‘Not See Party’ gags. ‘Not See’ only sounds like Nazi, if you’re an American or Canadian, elsewhere the joke falls flat.

 

Justin Long is perfectly believable as a douchebag who used to be a likeable nerd before semi-fame went to his head. He’s wonderfully obnoxious and glib, Parks is believably and amusingly weird. The film just doesn’t cut it, and directors need to stop indulging the every whim of eccentric movie stars, even ones who quite often hit it out of the park.

 

Rating: C