Review of Swiss Army Man (2016) by Alan W — 04 Oct 2016

AKA the farting corpse movie or the talking corpse movie, or even the corpse with the GPS erection movie. As juvenile and as gross as you expect, yet, you cannot deny the originality and inventiveness of the Daniels (as the writer-directors are credited) and the 120% commitment Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe gave in their performances in what is basically a two-hander of a movie.

The dreamy and sumptuous production invokes the artistic cheekiness and creativity of Michel Gondry while the earworm of a soundtrack seems appropriate and maddeningly annoying at the same time. But above all, there is a determined script that never wavers in its weirdness and pseudo-intellectual discourse on love, death and every missed opportunity in between.

The narrative flips between metaphorical fantasies and the lunatic ranting of an unhinged and unreliable narrator who may or may not have made everything up in his own deranged mind. This allows the enigmatic/baffling (delete as appropriate) ending of the film to be totally open to interpretation, producing a proper marmite of a movie that will either infuriate or inspire.

In the end, even if I subscribe to the former, my star rating has to begrudgingly reflect the fact that this bizarre concoction is totally different from anything you will encounter in your local Cineplex this or any year.