Review of Tusk (2014) by Jesse O — 04 Jan 2015

It's no secret that Kevin Smith's career post-2000 has been a struggle.  He still has his passionate and dedicated fan base who will defend anything he does to the death, even if it blows gigantic dong.

  Kevin Smith also did himself no favors by completely shitting on film criticism and complaining about critics writing negative reviews about his films.  He went about this in a completely ridiculous way, saying that until you do what he does, then you can't criticize him.

  Which, of course, begs the question if this applies to people that love his films as well.  If they don't do what he does then how could they possibly love his films.  Another to ask is if this only applies to filmmakers.

  Cause let's say that Smith decided to buy a car and the car ended up being a piece of turd.  Would he have to keep his mouth shut because he does not how to construct a vehicle. Essentially the point is that Smith has gone down a path of douchebaggery that has made me a little sick and tired of him.

  The guy is still clearly talented, but he obviously peaked with Clerks.  As far as I can tell, every Smith review I've done has had a positive score.  With the exception of Red State.  And I'm about to say something that a lot of his fans will find preposterous, but, in my view, this is his best movie in at least a decade.

  Yes, this includes Clerks 2.  And I'll get this out of the way first, I'm completely aware of the film's flaws.  It is is certainly over the place tonally, it could've used some tightening up, and it could've been paced much better than it was.

  But I found this to be a strange and inspired little film.  Apparently this film is based on a podcast Kevin Smith did with another dude where they read a letter from an old man offering a living situation, free of charge, as long as they dressed like a walrus.

  In the podcast, Smith and his friend(s) discussed how a hypothetical film would play out.  The filn was essentially made thanks to social media support.  It's not like this is the best horror film of all year, I wouldn't even feel right calling it an actual horror movie.

It's just weirdly ambitious and inconsistently entertaining. Explaining the film would really spoil it, so I'll save the details. Let's just say that the costume effects are pretty goddamn cheap, but it makes the movie a little more endearing.

It certainly is a flawed movie...and I probably wouldn't have given the film a solid, three-star rating if I wasn't for Johnny Depp's strangely hilarious performance as a detective. He, EASILY, has the best lines of the film.

And this film has Michael Parks doing some pretty great work as well. This is easily the most refreshing Depp has looked since 2003, when he became a Disney mascot. I wish the guy would do more roles like this, more out of the box stuff.

This is what he was known for prior to 2003, he was the guy who went for the weirdest roles that no one else would even touch. Long story short, Depp is tremendous here and I think people need to see his performance here.

It'll show a lot of people that he's more than just a Disney shill now. The writing is solid but unfocused. You'll have a scene of Michael Parks torturing Justin Long, before cutting to an unrelated scene with Depp's character doing a monologue.

Some of these scenes could've been edited down for time, but it is what it is. I digress, this film is certainly very flawed, and it's an acquired taste, but I found this film to be fun yet inconsistent.

Smith fans will probably love this, his detractors won't find anything to like here. So just another typical Kevin Smith movie.