Review of The Tripper (2006) by Steven M — 17 Oct 2007

...back in New York City.

Anyway, while in Canada I saw David Arquette's extremely clumsy directorial debut. It was quite disappointing. Long live the cliche.

I'd seen the trailer and had been looking forward to it, but it was really bad. It's not scary or subtle in any way. Arquette, who said he was just trying to make a "fun movie," in spite of the political digs (bashing, deserved or not) going on, fails at both. How subtle is it to have a big, ravenous pig named George W. Bush? Not very. Now I don't give a rat's ass about him, in any way, but that idea was not done very well at all.

I don't know if the President Arquette chose was too far removed from memory ( though I guess I derail my own argument when I think of the fact that I get more out of [b]Futurama[/b] using a bodyless Richard Nixon head than I do Arquette using a mental patient in a Ronald Reagan mask who is obsessed with killing hippies) or if the hippie/Reagan connection was too unknown. I honestly don't know what the hell Arquette was really going for, but I don't think he knew either.

I guess I'd say the movie was not funny enough to be a political satire, and not scary enough to be a horror; that automatically disqualifies it from being a horror comedy, as well. It's just poorly written, poorly directed, and poorly acted, for the most part. HEY HOLLYWOOD PEOPLE!!! SINCE YOU INSIST ON ONLY HIRING PRETTY PEOPLE FOR ALMOST EVERY SINGLE STARRING ROLE, HOW ABOUT YOU FIND ONES WHO CAN ACT? DUH!

When one of the victims is about to be killed by the masked Reagan and he yells out "But I'm a Republican!" I just groaned. UGH, what a stupid, stupid line.

I forgot another brilliant moment in the film. When the "wonderful" Balthazar Getty asks his estranged girlfriend, whom he is holding at gunpoint along with her runaway lover, how she could think he was a killer and she yells "Because you have a gun!" Wow, hilarious. Seriously.

I feel bad about this because I like Arquette and I wanted him to do well, but I'm tired of giving movies passing grades just because I like the actor/director or because I was watching a movie with my sweetie and felt so wonderful I thought for a moment that I was watching [b]Casablanca.[/b] (I drive him crazy because [b]Casablanca [/b]is often the standard I use for rating movies and I can be quite unreasonable about it.).

I didn't find anything original in it at all. The masked Reagan made me think of all of the other movies wherein Presidential masks were used in crimes, and I'm a little tired of the blind, Southern hick character. I'd like to see some guy from the South who hates on an idiot redneck just as much as someone from the East hates a cynical big city asshole who thinks he is better than everyone else. I'm a New Yorker who hates asshole New Yorkers. We [i]do[/i] exist.

I lost my train of thought. Yeah, gotta catch that train. Damn, I had something, but it went away. Thoughts derailed.

Movie bad. Coffee good. Chocolate good.

P.S. A special kick in the ass to Jason Mewes for being even worse than Balthazar Getty. What a P.O.S. "actor.".