Review of Swiss Army Man (2016) by K Nife C — 29 Jun 2016

"The Farting Corpse Movie" is what everyone called it. Now, I'm a twisted enough dude that that sounded like an excellent (but easy to screw up) premise. If that is enough to spark even a small amount of morbid curiosity in you, GO SEE THIS FILM.

"Swiss Army Man" is one of the funniest, sweetest, and most inventive films I've seen this year, much less the past several years. I'm going to go back and see it at least two more times.

Fart and boner jokes don't so much propel the movie as they punctuate an incredibly endearing friendship as Dano and Radcliffe ruminate on love, life, and everything that makes us human. Some scenes managed to capture so many complicated emotions that I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so I usually did both.

In a wilderness of shit and trash and fear, they craft simulacra of mundane reality and pretend their way to a quintessential gnosis. Fortunately, the Daniels who made this film never took an easy way out with the plot, and never relent in the sincerity of their vision of magical realism.

It is hard to shake the feeling that I was going to like this movie - I just didn't realize that I would love it.