“Gentlemen Broncos”
Directed by Jared Hess
Written by Jared Hess and Jerusha Hess
Starring: Michael Angarano, Jemaine Clement, Jennifer Coolidge and Halley Feiffer
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
By Scott Marks
Picking on Jared Hess’ inability to tell a story is like kicking a mentally handicapped toddler. It’s too easy. But, since Hess decided to include a shot of a church choir complete with Down syndrome singers to evoke shock and laughter, it’s time to get out my spiked boots.
Jared Hess is a cine-illiterate horse’s ass who has no conception of which end of the camera to look through. The pink projectile vomit that frequently punctuates “Gentlemen Broncos” has more structure than anything he’s penned. Here is a sentence I never thought I’d write: Hess actually made a film that’s worse than “Napoleon Dynamite” and “Nacho Libre” combined. Someone should break his hands so he can never again go near a keypad or a camera.
Let’s back up. My KPBS Radio producer Angela Carone always reminds me to find one good thing in a movie, no matter how much I dislike it, to talk about. The opening credits, comprised of the cast and crew’s names printed on the covers of pulp sci-fi novels, are lovely to look at. It’s all downhill from there.
Benjy (Michael Angarano) is a hopeless 17-year-old outsider who puts the EEK! in geek. The home schooled-dweeb, who fancies himself an up-and-coming fantasy scribe, has his mommy (Jennifer Coolidge) drive him to the bus that will transport him to the Cletus Festival. Joining him on his trek to the writer’s convention are Tabatha (Halley Feiffer), a girl more interested in shaking him down for tampon money and Lonnie (Héctor Jiménez), a teenage “filmmaker” who already has 84 films under his belt. Since Pedro, “Napoleon Dynamite’s” young Mexican dork who managed to get his face on posters and t-shirts across America, scored so big, Hess reasoned that lightning could indeed strike twice. This time he upped the stakes. Lonnie, whose smile resembles a picket fence after a hurricane blew through it, is directed to flash his gooey, maple syrup grin at the camera whenever possible.
At the conference Benjy meets his idol, Chevalier (Jemaine Clement), an established novelist whose publisher forced him to attend the seminar. Chevalier’s advice to the budding authors is to change their characters’ names so they rhyme with “vagina.” When his publisher informs Chevalier that his latest epic won’t fly, the desperate author decides to steal Benjy’s hand-written manuscript and claim it as his own. Needless to say, “Yeast Lords: The Bronco Years” becomes an overnight sensation.
There is a film-within-the-film that’s told from the points-of-view of both Benjy and Chevalier. Benjy envisions his Bronco (Sam Rockwell) as a Neanderthal warrior based on his dead father, while Chevalier conceptualizes his protagonist as a gay Hulk Hogan.
This time around Hess managed to assemble a cast of talented performers who all manage to embarrass themselves. Michael Angarano, who looks the part, knows how to crack his voice on cue and little else. Between “Broncos” and the upcoming “Bad Lieutenant,” Jennifer Coolidge appears to have altered her career trajectory by turning from red hot mama to the next Miss Edie minus the playpen and eggs. Jemaine Clement, mastermind behind “Eagle vs. Shark,” an equally dismal “Napoleon Dynamite” knockoff, may look like Benicio Del Toro and sound like James Mason, but his performance is decidedly one-note. With a diarrhea-spewing snake wrapped around his neck, Mike White, who co-wrote “Nacho Libre,” is the film’s main catalyst for doody jokes. Even the heretofore dependable Sam Rockwell becomes a willing contributor to the film’s awfulness.
“Gentlemen Broncos” is not only the worst comedy of the year (it will make you fall in love with “Beth Cooper”), it could very well be the worst picture of the year. I don’t know about you, but I got more laughs out of Rudolf Hess.
