Fatty Drives the Bus

You know how sometimes you can watch a crappy movie with friends and laugh at all the shortcomings of the movie? Well this was beyond that. I bought the DVD at Tower Records because it was like $3.00 and I'd heard this was a movie you could laugh at. It is really nothing short of pathetic. About 30 minutes into the movie, my friends started asking me to turn it off. Around 45 minutes they begged me. After an hour, we compromised to fast forward to the end, so we could see how the conflict was resolved (and because we had been watching the whole time for Matt Walsh). Seriously, don't watch this movie. It is beyond painful.

I have seen a lot of movies in my life, but not many as bad as this. It is a movie that makes fun of fat people, has no real story, has bad actors, is not funny and much more. Is this a movie that you would like to see? I guess not!

I guess that the makers of the movie was trying to be original and creative, but it looks like it was made by a 12 year old child with absolutely no cinematic skills at all. The so called funny parts is as funny as throughing pies in the faces of people, or breaking wind. Of cource if this is the kind of humour that you like, then this is the movie for you!!

Dont waste your money on this movie!

Is that a good thing? To be honest I'm still not entirely sure.

The cover and plot description of Fatty Drives The Bus shown here on IMDb doesn't even scratch the surface of how utterly bizarre this movie is. I did enjoy the movie to a certain extent, the assortment of bizarre characters are memorable, and the film has a very oddball, surreal sense of humor, which I can get into. There are several scenes where I found myself laughing out loud, and others where I felt very uncomfortable.

Unfortunately there are some scenes that are very slow and go on for way longer than they needed to, some of the scenes are just plain stupid, and, quite frankly, some scenes are just too weird to be enjoyable.

I really don't know who I would recommend this to, as you do need to have a very specific sense of humor to enjoy it. If you are a fan of comedians such as Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, I would say at least give this one a shot.

"You know, Indians lived here before the white man slaughtered them, now all that's left is the totem pole. Hmmmmmm, I wonder if it would fit up my a**!" - The Narrator

No, I'm not joking around. If you ever, EVER, have the chance to see this movie see it. If you need chop off your arm to see it, see it. It's worth it.

Fatty Drives The Bus is unlike any film you've ever seen. It takes trash cinema and elevates it to a work of art. While it contains poor shots, idiotic characters, bad dialogue, strange acting, and cinematography that belongs on public access in Iowa, it actually succeeds in its goal as a film. It strives to be the dumbest, strangest, most inane movie you've ever seen. And boy does it ever succeed.

I will lay out the plot for those of you who worry about such things (the filmmakers obviously didn't), but really you needn't pay too much attention because the entire film's plot is presented in a very long piece of text played before the opening credits. In any event, FDTB (as its admirers call it) is the story of a bus tour through Chicago, which is led by Satan. You see, Jesus is in town, and all the passengers on the bus are supposed to die, and all their souls would have gone to hell, except with Jesus in town, a lackey in hell calls off the job, and this angers Satan because, well he doesn't like looking like a fool in front of the guy, so he decides to get the people on the bus to sign over their souls to him directly, but he's a devil, so he needs to disguise himself, otherwise, who'd go on a tour with him right, so he disguises himself as Roger and he gets on the bus, where the driver is never referred to by name, but he is kind of fat, so I guess he's Fatty. The bus (and the riders) are on a collision course with wackiness!

Examples of some lunacy: The title repeats on the screen 3 times. I don't know why. A character appears on the bus in mid-trip without explanation or introduction, and occassionally sits next to the others, and they look at her like she doesn't belong. I don't know why. Two characters fall in love and exchange longing glances, that are really the same shots repeated over and over again. I don't know why. After Satan gives a minute long monologue about transforming into human form a title card flashes "Satan is going to transform." I don't know why. One character is a woman who is very obviously a man in drag, and is referred to by other characters as "the glamorous Bridget." I don't know why.

If there was one good thing that came out of my internship at Troma last summer it was getting my own copy of Fatty Drives The Bus.

For a while I was caught in the trap where I found myself watching independent and foreign films and lying to myself that I liked them. Fatty Drives the Bus is the exception. It is the truth. It is the best "bad" movie ever.

The "badness" of this movie seems to come naturally. Halfway through Satan's opening monologue, the word "Hell" appears at the bottom of the screen. The glamorous Bridget is an unshaven man in a wig and a thrift store dress. It takes the eccentric couple that keeps trying to kill each other FOREVER to walk down the stairs. Jesus walks to a funk soundtrack.

Anyways, Fatty gives the impression that someone lost their tenure for advising a senior's film project. But it's the sincerity of how bad it is that makes it so wonderful. You get the impression the makers knew it was going to be bad, but never forced it.

Never to be duplicated in wonder, Fatty delivers. Highly highly recommended.