Review of Flypaper (2011) by Tss5078 — 30 Dec 2013

This is one of the strangest films I have ever seen and I really liked it. When Flypaper first started, it was absolutely ridiculous, to a point where I almost turned it off. If it wasn't for a huge cast I really like, I would have.

The story starts off simple enough, a man is making a deposit at a bank and hitting on the pretty young teller, when armed men attempt a robbery, which is halted by another crew robbing the same bank at the same time.

Suddenly, a customer is murdered by a mysterious third party and chaos ensues. From there the film is broken into three parts, including the hostages trying to figure out what's going on, the trained crew trying to break into the vault, and the redneck crew trying to get into the ATM's with massive amounts of plastic explosives.

The story is crazy and hard to follow at first, but then it actually becomes pretty funny. Tripp (Patrick Dempsey) is convinced that something strange is going on and decides to investigate. Dempsey's OCD personality and crazy antics are funny, but the way the rest of the cast responds to him is what's really funny.

As for the two crews they each have problems of their own, which also leads to some funny moments. The rest of the cast is full of stars, something you wouldn't expect in a film like this. Ashley Judd, Octavia Spencer, Jeffery Tambor, John Ventamiglia, and Mekhi Phiffer all have bit parts that in the end turn out to be important to the story, because as it turns out, Tripp is right, there is something really up going on.

The weirdness and hilarity build to an Ocean's Elevenesq ending that was a pretty surprising twist. Right from the beginning, Flypaper seemed like an absolute bomb, but I stuck with it and it resulted in a ton of laughs, a somewhat interesting mystery, and an unexpected ending that will leave you speechless.