Review of Tusk (2014) by Mike N — 02 Mar 2015

Kevin Smith. Kevin "the Clerks guy" Smith. Kevin "the critic hater" Smith. It's tough to discuss a director who's more known these days for his outbursts than his work. Bursting onto the indie scene in 1994 with the game changer Clerks (a film he made for $27,575, and would gross over $3 million), he became one of the "indie brats" of the late 80's, early 90's, bunched in with Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Spike Lee, Michael Moore and Richard Linklater as one of these young kids with a camera and a vision at a time where big-budget weariness had caused studios to snap them up and make deals in a flash. While Quentin rode Palme D'Or success from Pulp Fiction (released the same year as Clerks, both by Miramax) into Jackie Brown and Rodriguez was crafting a sequel to his $7,000 action flick to the tune of $7 million, Kevin Smith took a deal with Universal Studios to make a teen comedy.

Even though Spike Lee had years prior fought bitterly with Warner Bros. over his epic Malcolm X, Smith was really the first of the indie brats to step into the seemingly welcoming arms of the big studio system and make Mallrats, a raunchy 80's throwback for the flannel age which received a harsh critical drubbing (deservedly so) and sent Smith back to Miramax with his head hung. Feeling that "Clerks was overrated and Mallrats was underrated", his next feature would be a personal, confessional film entitled Chasing Amy and would prove to be not only a career launcher for Ben Affleck but would earn Smith his best reviews to date (and a Criterion edition of the film), and allowed him the freedom to make the religious comedy Dogma, the Hollywood satire Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and what would be his career killer, Jersey Girl, a quaint, average rom-com that suffered from Bennifer fatigue (this was post-Gigli at this point) and a dreadful female lead.

Smith quietly railed against the critics for the hit he took with Jersey Girl, and earned sympathy from his massive fan base and after-the-fact reviewers who realized the film was unfairly judged. After Judd Apatow took Smith's talk-dirty schtick and removed the heart to make films like Knocked Up and Superbad, Smith became determined to reclaim his crown as comedy's enfant terrible with Clerks II and Zack and Miri Make a Porno beginning a downward spiral into Cop Out, which received such hate-riddled reviews (and rightly so) that Smith swore to retire from filmmaking and that he would start charging critics to see his movies. It was revealed that he and Bruce Willis had several spats on set, spurred by Smith's frequent marijuana use, a habit he picked up from Rogen that he feels "helps his creative process".

Well, after a small critical comeback with the horror film Red State and building a media empire of podcasts and TV shows (including AMC's Comic Book Men which, full disclosure, this writer appeared on), Smith decided to take another crack at the filmmaking game he'd swore to leave behind. His newest project was inspired by an article he'd read during a stoned podcasting session about a man wanting to sew another man into a walrus suit. Getting the film on track and casting acting great Michael Parks as the lonely fisherman, it appeared this project could either be a brilliant piece of weirdness or an absolute pot-fueled mess, with not an inch of wiggle room between.

Which was it? That truly depends on who you ask. Though the reviews were good out of Toronto, the audience seemed mixed, and has continued to be ever since. It's undoubtedly the year's most divisive film, and passionately so, and the issue of personal opinion is significant. There's little way to write objectively on the subject, beyond stating that it's a very bizarre film, very graphic and not at all for everyone. This writer and a fellow critic saw it within a day of each other, and while its of this author's opinion that the film is a success, he swore it was one of the all time worst films he'd ever seen in his entire life (and this is a man who argues the artistic merit of a majority of the Halloween and Friday the 13th franchises). Now, perhaps our perceptions of the film, as many would be, are tainted by our perceptions of the man behind it.

This other critic, well before this film, had expressed his disdain for Smith as a director and has an open hatred for the later work of the actor who plays manhunter Guy LaPointe (whose identity, for the sake of avoiding spoilers, we shall keep a secret from our readers), so some could argue he's biased. Then again, considering not only this author's vantage point as somewhat a minuscule part of Smith's media empire, as well as Chasing Amy being one of this author's all-time top 5 films, one could argue there's a bias here as well (though this critic's dislike of Mallrats, Jay and Silent Bob, Clerks II, Zack and Miri and Cop Out make it a fairly even 5/11 divide of favor towards Smith). It's hard not to have a bias with a filmmaker who's as well known for his words as his work, and such a bias is likely to effect how one views a film as bold, bombastic and absurd as Tusk. So let the reader beware, this author can only truly offer his own take (and can redirect those inclined towards the opposite perception), so take such a review with as much or as little value as you choose to place upon it.

For this writer's money, Tusk is a terrific experience. It's reminiscent of They Live or the Japanese cult classic House. It's a silly film, no doubt, but it's sincere in it's silliness. It doesn't attempt to skewer or parody the horror genre. It doesn't go for outright laughs. Like The Rocky Horror Picture show (whom it could easily join on the midnight movie circuit), Tuck just gets weird. Really, really weird. Michael Parks makes a masterwork of such a bizarre and quirky character as "Howard Howe", a sad, lonely retired seaman seeking companionship, into whom Smith manages to infuse a tragic and true-life backstory that, if the film does nothing else, should shed light on a horrific part of Canada's history. Justin Long and Haley Joel Osment do their part to move the film along, and Genesis Rodriguez takes what would otherwise be a minor role and commits to it with everything she's got, selling it as seemingly no one else could (a surprising stand out is Smith's daughter Harley Quinn, whose small part in the film is performed much better than one would expect from an amateur. It will be interesting to see how she does taking the lead in the film's follow-up, Yoga Hosers). The story is admittedly strange, and goes all out, even putting Long in the ridiculously false-looking walrus flesh suit. It's absurd both in its look and it's cheesy 70's zoom shooting, but that just adds to the fun of this quirky film.

It's a mishmash of ideas, yes, including some that don't work (an attempt at a Tarantino-like exchange between Parks and Guy LaPointe falls flat, despite Parks giving it his all, and the film tries to hide the blatantly obvious identity of Rodriguez's "other man", but infusions of Guy Madden-esque flashback sequences in tribute to it's Northern setting and Coen Brothers style dialogue segments like an explanation of "Canando's and Canadon'ts" are strange enough to keep this fascinating little curio on track. One couldn't exactly expect high art from a plot involving a walrus suit (though some will suggest the film is indeed "high" art), but what one could expect, and one gets, is something unlike you've ever seen before. At it's core, the film is an odd, abstract little affair, not Oscar worthy by any means, but for those who've grown weary of by-the-books fare like No Good Deed, A Most Wanted Man or the countless "guy with gun" crime films available in theaters today, Tusk is a breath of fresh air (typical of its distributor A24, who also brought us Under the Skin and Spring Breakers), a palate cleanser, and a reminder that films can break the mold. Whether you love it or hate it, it's definitely good to know other options truly do exist beyond the sequels, reboots and knockoffs.