Review of Gentlemen Broncos (2009) by Justin B — 23 Nov 2010

MIxed bag.

The film's heart is definitely in the right place but its quirkiness becomes a crutch for its lack of actual clever humor. It's stuffed with toilet humor which is surprising and it relies heavily on the audience's ability to laugh at awkward situations.

The characters are interesting specifically The protagonist and the pretentious fantasy author (played by Jemaine Clement) but our hero's character is curiously inconsistent and Clement gets minimal screen time (but he manages to steal every scene he's in). I really wanted to know these characters better but I felt too detached from the film to care.

It's overall plot structure and pacing seem to be on the warped end as well with very little happening. The main plot gets benched on the sidelines as we are forced to sit through meaningless quirky subplot's with the annoying additional characters only to have the main plot swiftly wrap itself up at the very end.

Napoleon dynamite worked because it had the right amount of offbeat humor to make audiences fall in love with its characters. Broncos pushes the bar, waning on its good intentions. Despite it's tremendous amount of flaws, it still has that little bit of charm to make it (sort of) worthwhile.