You Might as Well Live

Really great Canadian films are hard to find. They're so thinly spread that most get lost or eclipsed by the sea of American output. On the same token, truly solid, 'funny from beginning to end' comedies are just as rare, at least for my specifically demented taste, ad mark my words, you've got to have one sick puppy of a sense of humour to appreciate You Might As Well Live, a comedy so dark it feels like it has origins in some obscure back alley improv skit fashioned by the strangest people in the class. If that sounds like a glowing compliment fpr a film to get, then keep reading, this may just be the animal for you (I'm looking at all of you YLYL's lurking my feed). This one plays like a mix of John Waters and MadTV on crack. It concerns a childlike loser named Robert R. Mutt (Josh Peace), a hapless schmuck who never seems to be able to do anything right. His childhood idol, major league baseball star Clinton Manitoba (Michael Madsen, riotous) appears to him, claiming he needs three things to succeed in life: A girl, some money and a championship ring. And so he sets out on a deranged quest in his scuzzy rural town, beset by all kinds of drug dealers, vagrants, oddballs and deviants, including rabid Fred Steinke (a maniacal Stephen Mchattie) who aims to have Robert chemically castrated. It's seriously off the map, queasy humour that hits some notes so off key that laughs turn sour upon leaving you as you realize you shouldn't find it funny. But hell, I did. So if you're down, give it a go, and remember: Robert R. Mutt is NOT A douchebag!!

Not only is this film disgusting, offensive and vulgar, but it's also just plain dumb. I mean c'mon, isn't a naked nerd getting called a pedophile and chased by an equally pedophilic clown just a little bit juvenile? I don't mean to sound like a prude or a snob, but penis jokes and sex jokes stopped being funny when I was in the ninth grade. Mental hospitals and lazy stereotypes of the many patients within one just aren't funny to me. Neither is a man having a sexual fetish for paralyzed and disabled people. Have I missed something here? The one and only scene I really enjoyed in this film was the one where a psychologist and a patient have an air hockey match and the orderlies are placing bets. Julian Richings is an excellent actor, I don't know why on earth he'd sign up to be in a film like this one. With its Troma style, its lame jokes and its cheap digital footage that looks like Toronto stock footage shots, 'You Might As Well Live' is I think one of the worst things I've seen in quite some time.

Since watching this movie last evening I've been trying to decide what audience it was made for. All I can come up with was 30-40-something and stoned. I'm sorry, the humour was so sophomoric, simple, and just plain un-funny it's border-line unbearable. I shamefully resisted the urge to shut it off after the first scene, and in hindsight I'd be a better person if I had. The reason I stuck it out is that the acting, with a few notable exceptions, is actually not terrible. Gotta feel for an actor who has this atrocity on their resume.

I couldn't. I knew from the very first unfunny scene that this would be a stinker. They show a picture of the town sign with eggs being thrown at it--isn't that a scream? Guy throws himself off bridge into a shallow creek and doesn't die--how hilarious. Stale jokes, lame jokes, unbelievable characters (look--to be funny, we kind of have to believe in the reality of at least some of the people involved), jokes about paralysis, about naked guys pressing themselves against each other (like they're gay, see? Isn't that so funny?). The film is shot in eye-scarifying garish color and everyone looks sweaty, seedy and grubby. I suppose that's also supposed to be a total laff riot. The soundtrack is twangy scratchy country-western guitar, like something out of Laugh-In's short films. Don't waste your time.

Can't remember the last time I saw a money that could only fit in the Comedy genre that did not once make me laugh. This movie is testicles in your face and semen in your mouth.

The "jokes" in this movie are so stupid and unfunny that it would take someone as dumb as the lead character to crack a smile. Speaking of which, he is probably one of the worst comedic stars to appear in any film. His whole shtick is apparently that he has a Midwestern accent. And that he is stupid. If you think a movie about a character like that would make you crack up, then maybe they ought to stick you in the insane asylum.

The apparent "funny" scenes with this character are when he gets in situations he isn't ready to deal with. This would include S&M parties, in a tent with a naked woman, and on drugs. There are not actual jokes that take place in these scenes. Its just the main character acting like an ass with his dumb accent.

This movie has some strange fetish with showing paralyzed people. They play off the joke of the paralyzed only able to utter monotonic sounds like "uuuuuuuuurgh" and the main character is somehow able to decipher this into 30 second statements. The joke is so stupid I feel like I've dropped a couple IQ points just describing it. But, this jokes occurs at least 5 times in the movie without variation.

The only other things I remember are the main character running through the town naked with his junk out. I'm assuming this was a fake thing he was wearing, but I wasn't really looking close enough to tell. The color composition is similar to one of the classic horror movie remakes. Everything is high contrast and usually has some yellowish or blue tint to it. I guess this is the only good and honest thing about the film. This is of course because the film would probably do better as putting itself in the horror genre than the comedy genre. Not only because of some of the disgusting scenes in the movie, but the pain that the viewer has to go through to get through this 78 minute epoch of pain.