Review of Gentlemen Broncos (2009) by Marcus F — 22 Mar 2011

Benjamin is home schooled by his mother. His father died a long time ago. He has an interest in science fiction stories and hopes to have one of his own published. His idol is Ronald Chevalier. Chevalier published his first sci/fi book trilogy when he was only 15 years old. It was some sort weird tale about Harpies. I'll just leave it at that.

Benjamin is given the opportunity to showcase his work by entering into a fantasy writer's workshop called Cletus Fest. Chevalier is to be a big turn out at the fest by presenting a contest to all the writer's and whoever wins get's their story published. So Benjamin is pretty excited about that. He meets a girl named Tabatha there and her bizarre friend Lonnie who is involved with the media arts by creating his own films made at really really low budgets. Lonnie believes in Benjamin's story which is aptly titled 'Yeast Lords: The Bronco Years'. Lonnie see's potential for a feature film and acquires the rights from Benjamin to make it into a film.

The film is a complete disgrace to Benjamin's vision and not only that, but him and Lonnie become the talk of the town when Chevalier cries out plagiarism claiming that the film is based on his "own" "original" work called The Chronicles of Brutus & Balzaak. What Chevalier did, however, was to take Benjamin's Bronco story, changed the names and turned Bronco into a Tranny. Benjamin confronts Chevalier at a book signing of Brutus & Balzaak to take his anger out on his idol for whom he once thought was awesome.

I'm forgetting a few other quirky characters, like Benjamin's mother and his guardian angel, Dusty, who isn't really an angel but some guy who works at a guardian angel program for which Benjamin's mother signed up for so her son could have friends.

This is a truly bizarre film. Much of it is interwoven with scenes of bizarre sci/fi antics with Bronco, Played by Sam Rockwell, and his gonads. Other scenes are around for quirky and gross out effect like, for example, seeing a python get diarrhea on Dusty's shoulder. I could sympathize with Benjamin and his struggle, but I could not believe that in the end he could come out on top against Chevalier. It was a real cheap shot at a happy ending that was forced and I couldn't buy into it.

Overall, a bizarre gross out cheesy gonad of a sci/fi comedy trying to hard to be quirky with it's characters.