Nature Calls

Nature Calls (2012)

BOMB (out of 4)

Incredibly awful comedy has Boy Scout leader Randy (Patton Oswalt) kidnapping his brother's (Johnny Knoxville) adopted son and friends and taking them into the woods for a camping trip. Yes, that's pretty much the entire story. I've seen quite a few bad movies in my lifetime but it's pretty clear that it's hard to get a movie made today and get it released to something other than Youtube. I say that because for the life of me I can't see how this thing got financing and I really can't understand why some studio would actually buy it, try to release it and make money off of it. This here is without question one of the worst and most pathetic comedies I've seen in a very long time and it's really too bad considering the talented cast. I really couldn't understand where any of the comedy was supposed to be coming from because the screenplay doesn't have anything remotely funny or even that interesting. Yes, I get it, the Boy Scouts are falling apart and this Randy is just holding onto the past. That's fine but is this supposed to be funny? Is it funny seeing boys pee in the woods? Is it funny seeing the adopted son is from Africa? Is is supposed to be funny that the brother gets set on fire? The entire movie is just one big flop after another with bad jokes, a boring story and not a single interesting thing going on. Oswalt pretty much sleepwalks through the role and this is certainly the worst I've seen from him. Knoxville is just more annoying than anything else and Maura Tierney is just wasted. The late, great Patrice O'Neal is the only bit of energy but sadly he's not in the film enough to make it better. NATURE CALLS is a complete misfire that's certainly one of the worst films of the year.

Nature Calls is the last film I'd expect from Todd Rohal, who directed the eccentric mixed-bag that was Guatemalan Handshake and the hugely questionable but watchable Catechism Cataclysm, among a wide variety of short films in the nineties. Rohal's style seemed as if he would shy away from anything remotely in the same vein as Nature Calls, a farce centered around a boy scouts trip in the woods. I expected Rohal's next project to be quirky, but what I didn't expect it to be was conventional.

Just by his five short films and two feature films, I knew Rohal was something different in cinema. Whether or not I like his work is a different story, but I will always look forward to what the man has coming out simply because it's something I can't rationally expect. How many filmmakers can we say that out about? I know Steven Spielberg's next film will either be a big-budget adventure film or a serious-minded biopic, I know Kevin Smith's next film will be a human drama centered around hockey, I know Martin Scorsese will examine another cultural figure with a magnifying glass, and I know Tyler Perry will continue to humanize African Americans with another Madea movie or a drama totally in its own melodramatic league. I am completely unsure of what Rohal's next move will be after two extremely out there, independent films and one obscure comedy playing dress-up in mainstream clothes.

The plot concerns Randy (Patton Oswalt), a dedicated boy scout leader, who desperately wants to get children excited about learning the fundamentals of nature and how to survive in the deep wilderness. The problem is in the dawn of technology and commercial flashiness, children are not even remotely interested in what Randy has to say or do. When the kids would rather go to Randy's brother Kirk's home (Johnny Knoxville) to welcome home their new adopted son from Africa, Randy crashes the party and takes the kids for the trip of a lifetime in the woods. This leaves Kirk, his pal Gentry (Rob Riggle), and an angry parent (the late, great comedian Patrice O'Neal) to find Randy, while having Kirk's wife fend off a crowd of angry, nervous parents who want to find their children's whereabouts.

The only thing worse than witnessing a lukewarm or flat-out bad comedy is thinking about what that comedy could've been if things had went in a different direction. There is a scene in the movie that takes place after Kirk is injured very badly after being caught on fire. He requests the children build a stretcher out of materials they find in the woods. They come back a little while later having erected a life-size cross, akin to the one Jesus Christ was crucified on. When they tie Kirk to the cross, they drag him across the woods, bloody, badly cut, and screaming for mercy.

When watching this scene, I realized the true potential this could've had as a twisted, dark comedy with obscure humor and inane setups. All while Todd Rohal maintained his status as an enigmatic filmmaker. But for some baffling reason, Rohal decided to make a comedy that more-or-less tried to hard to mimic that of a foul-mouthed mainstream comedy and only succeeded in being gratuitously foul-mouthed and hinting it could've been destined for cult greatness.

The other downside to the film is that so much comedic talent here is wasted. Patton Oswalt, who has worked in great dark comedy films such as Big Fan and Young Adult, does about as much as he can with the thin material provided, Johnny Knoxville and Rob Riggle are mostly obnoxious bullies without ever being funny, and Patrice O'Neal is the only guy who can get a laugh but even this makes me think about the good films he could've been in if he hadn't died young.

It would appear Rohal wanted to make an independent comedy that dabbled into the mannerisms of a mainstream one but tried to simultaneously give off the impression of a sweet, simple farce that a studio couldn't make. This is a stretch, but it's a nice justification for now. Nature Calls, right down to its perfunctory title, is a wholly disappointing effort from a filmmaker who definitely has better material and ideas on his hands.

Starring: Patton Oswalt, Johnny Knoxville, Rob Riggle, and Patrice O'Neal. Directed by: Todd Rohal.

While I didn't have high hopes for Nature Calls to begin with, it went above and beyond to prove me wrong. It was even worse than I ever could have imagined and, as per the summary of this review, is quite possibly the worst movie I have ever seen.

I get that you can make a low brow comedy flick. In fact, I don't mind them. That's what I expected from this. But to call it a comedy would be a flat out lie. There was no redeeming humor in the film at all, not a single laugh. The plot and story were incoherent, the characters were undeveloped and horrible, the actors (as one critic put it) phoned it in, and the editing was atrocious. The entire thing made no sense - it wasn't even so bad it was good. It was just bad.

If you want a 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th opinion read any of the other critic reviews. Just whatever you do - do NOT watch this movie. I don't usually write reviews, but if I can't get my 90 minutes back at least I can save yours.

This movie was so terrible that I told my brother that I would give him $1 for every minute he made it through. I had to watch it in 4 installments over 3 weeks because it was that terrible. I'm down $22.

There were parts of the movie that were just screaming. When I say screaming, I literally mean screaming about whatever subject popped into the actor's brain. There could have not been a script. I'm serious. If there was a script, I would be incredibly surprised. My other theory is they all did a ton of muscle relaxers and tried to act on them.

If you do decide that you want to watch this movie make sure you have your wife/husband/friend lock away all your knives, guns, razors, sharp items, rope, etc. Because it's that bad.

Save yourself some time and energy and read Youtube comments instead of watching this "movie".

I had higher hopes for this movie considering the cast. It had a few laughs hear and there, but it was generally an unfunny mess. There no character development and actual story arc. It was just a serious of bits. A few laughs, but I debated not finishing the movie while watch. Overall very disappointing.