Review of Almost Heroes (1998) by Mandy B — 11 Jul 2013

A giant misstep on the part of director Christopher Guest, this film tries to make a fast buck off of spoofs of the eighteenth century and expeditions to the new world. Frontiersmen life is easily mined for some gratuitous laughs, but everything about this film feels rushed and unnecessary.

Even with some of the same cast Guest has used in the past, this film feels nothing like his previous mockumentaries. Guest is best in his element when he is pursuing the world of the rich, vain, and out of touch, and to focus on the past in this strange way makes no sense.

The film is a straight up buddy comedy movie, focusing on a rich fop (Perry) who wants to reach the Western coast of the United States before the Lewis and Clark expedition can. He hires a tracker (Farley) to lead a crew of men there, and along the way they get into several kinds of shenanigans.

If you were to ask me what those shenanigans were, I would have a hard time telling you, because though there are some interactions with Native Americans, a love triangle, and a near death, this film is very boring and tedious.

The comedy is childish, and the characters are brutish ignoramuses most of the time. Perry's performance is never reigned in, and the indignant behavior of a rich man could easily be mistaken for an excessive bi-polar patient.

Farley in turn also gives an over-the-top performance, but of all the people in this film, he is simply expected to be that crass and loud. He's really the only acceptable performer in this film, though it does hurt that this had to be his last film, released post humorously.

There's just nothing here except an idea for a setting, and otherwise everything else gets garbled, whether it be the petty humor or the moronic sense of pacing.