Review of Gentlemen Broncos (2009) by Shark M — 05 May 2010

If Jared Hess's goal is to win an Oscar as a director, he is heading in a very wrong direction. Since I had a mild interest in Napolean Dynamite, I thought I would give Gentleman Broncos a shot. Seriously wrong move. I imagine if there had been a more well written story, this movie could have been good. After all, just as I was at the point of turning off Hamlet II, they actually got to producing the play and turned what was a snoozer into a very good movie. Unfortunately for Gentleman Broncos, there was no 'deus ex machina' to save it.

Supposedly an adolescent coming of age comedy, the story revolves around Benjamin, a nerd who has a penchant for writing scifi stories. He has one of his stories stolen and published by a famous scifi writer (played by Jemaine Clement who was the only interesting character in the film). Because of some alterations to his original, and the fact that he is basically clueless, Benjamin is unaware of the theft. Instead he enters into a truly boring subplot where some friends try and film the orignal story. Suffice it to say, you can probably find better stuff on YouTube.

The other tragedy about this film is that Benjamin's crazy mother is played by Jennifer Coolidge (Stiffler's mom in American Pie). I can assure you that even Stiffler would be repelled by how she was made up in this movie. How can you take an attractive woman like that and turn her into what looks like a bag lady?

****Spoiler alert ***** I just wanted to alert everyone that this movie's spoiled......