Hot Rod

I've seen some amazing and critically-acclaimed films recently, like No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood, as well as some not-as-amazing but still critically-acclaimed films like Juno and American Gangster. But the film I'm going to bless with a review on this blog is ... Hot Rod. Why Hot Rod? Because it's the film you are least likely to have seen. My review might not change that.

I had put Hot Rod on my Netflix queue, and it hit the top spot recently, so I gave it a chance to make me find it funny (a chance all comedies deserve). What I got was like a series of high-production-value Lonely Island videos played back-to-back, but not all ones that I like. It has the same quirky, 1980s-meets-internet-age vibe as Napoleon Dynamite, and many other similarities too, but I can see why Napoleon found more of an audience, before people became tired of quirk in general.

Of course, there are parts that I found funny — when Rod introduces his "crew" to the girl-next-door (literally), and they don't quite understand how to say a few words about themselves; the first jump, on the non-reinforced ramp; Will Arnett. Other things just didn't do it for me — Rod's enthusiastic fan, who loves to dance (it's funny because he's Asian!); Rod's "2 Legit 2 Quit" speech and subsequent crosswalk accident; the behind-the-scenes DVD extra that kind of made me want to punch people in the face. Many gags were so unrelated to the plot or tried to wring humor out of being so drawn out — Rod falling down a hill; an impromptu "cool beans" musical number; Ebenezer Scrooge. Family Guy has really played that out already.

As an example of where this film went wrong, for me, consider a scene in which Rod is telling someone about his biological father's death. Rod describes a series of gruesome injuries that his dad incurs during his last attempted stunt and ends with: "he died instantly". That's already funny, because it's comically redundant after what we hear the bike did to its rider, right? No. Too highbrow, apparently; Rod has to add: "... the next day". I un-laughed. The line that I found so disappointing is now listed as a "favorite quote" on many a MySpace page, though, so what do I really know about comedy?

I'm not surprised that they had to test-screen the movie to death, or that the same scene would be listed as both an audience's favorite and least favorite. Every joke is hit-or-miss. I watched all of the deleted scenes and outtakes, and I think I could edit together a version of the film that I would find at least 10x funnier (especially using some of Danny R. McBride's ad-libs or some of Will Arnett's alternate dialogue). The problem is that your funnier version might need different discarded clips, or clips from another movie.