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I really enjoyed this movie. While I do enjoy action and science fiction films, it's great to not see anything blown up for a change. I'm from a nearby state and the characters felt real to me. I remember the newspaper stories about the Herman bachelor festival and it was fun seeing a movie about it. In the fictionalized version several romances develop after the bifg weekend and most end happily. I enjoyed seeing small town people treated as intelligent and the mostly gentle humor. It's a good feel good movie; I'd like to get it on tape or DVD some time.

The story of the bride fair is an amusing and engaging one, and it is to the filmmaker's credit that he sets out to portray rural Minnesotans with the same respect ordinarily reserved for Coast-dwellers. It is weird, though, to find an independent movie, the brainchild of a single person, that is as unambitious and cliché-ridden as a committee-brewed Hollywood potboiler.

The portrait of rural people is intended to be affectionate, I think, but these characters don't ring true to me--I have had quite a few meals in small-town diners, but never overheard a debate on the merits of different nineteenth-century English novelists. One might suggest that writer/director Semans has no more experience with rural culture than the Coen brothers, and considerably less satiric verve.

Given that this film was not picked up by a distributer for release soon after its completion, I was pleasantly surprised at its overall quality. It is a simplistic story but holds your attention very well. The first half is very funny and then shifts into a heartwarming tug at your heartstrings. General comments that I heard upon leaving the theater were very positive. Striking aerial and land based farmland scenery.

This is a pleasant enough movie about a small town full of unmarried guys. They advertise to encourage single girls to visit the town but are overwhelmed by the number who turn up. The movie contains some interesting character studies, but to the average movie goer, it probably paints a poor picture of country folk, especially the men. The is a warts and all look at the town, especially the guys. They seem to be a sorry lot even when the bus loads of women arrive. There is some irony depicted and perhaps we should all look closer at the things we have before looking elsewhere.

I'll say one thing for Herman, USA: it will probably always play well to Minnesota audiences. I can't imagine that there's another place in the world where a reference to the fast life of Bemidji or a line like "I knew there was something wrong with Iowa guys" would bring down the house. I actually quite enjoyed the first hour or so. Basically, a bunch of lonely country boys take out a personals ad and find their town beset with willing female suitors (is suitors a gender-specific word?). It ain't progressive, to be sure, but it's sorta charming in its own right. Pity that the filmmakers felt the need to tack on a contrived subplot about a conniving golddigger and her violent husband. Overall it's just too cloying for its own good, but you've got to give some props to a film with the guts to give a guy with Kevin Chamberlin's build a nude love scene. I will always applaud the depiction of people who don't meet the usual standards of beauty as sexual, caring human beings, but that's not enough to redeem Herman, USA. To paraphrase Jello Biafra, it's nostalgia for an age that never existed.