The Sasquatch Gang

Justin Long is Gavin's burn out neighbor, who desperate for money hatches a somewhat brilliant plan to sell fake plaster casts of Bigfoot prints. Gavin and his friends discover the Bigfoot tracks while out hiking one afternoon and race off to tell the authorities. Eventually the law (Jon Gries) brings a Sasquatch expert (Carl Weathers) to see the Bigfoot poo and prints they find in a local forest. Gavin's friends and rivals decide to complicate matters and sabotage Gavin's chance for fame.

Tim Skousen, of 2001's Leon, apparently decided to have his actors pretend they were in Napoleon Dynamite. What happened was some crazy amalgamation of Napoleon Dynamite, Joe Dirt, Bully and several other influences I recognized. Here the main character, Gavin (Jeremy Sumpter), seems in many ways to be the least nerdish character in the group. I applaud Addie Land who played what is easily imaginable as a real life unflattering role of the cute girl who inescapably has it in her genes to become fat. Most of the acting is not credible but the performances are caricatures anyway so it matters little.

I went into this film with little knowledge of its plot beyond what IMDb and the Slamdance Film Festival published (at the time of this writing, there isn't a trailer or even a poster!).

That being said, I found myself starting to laugh at the very opening sequence, where the three geeks "prepare to do battle." The moment that won me over was when Gavin (played by Jeremy Sumpter) went over to a little portable CD boom-box to play some medieval music to set the "proper scene" for the battle! From then on, I sat back, relaxed, and enjoyed a pleasant comedy that was well-written, directed, edited, and acted (definitely a breakout performance by Sumpter as well as Hubbel Palmer as his sidekick).

Judging from the sustained laughter from the audience, I wasn't alone in my admiration for this independent film.

Tim Skousen, the first assistant director on Napoleon Dynamite, serves as the director and writer on The Sasquatch Gang. This is clearly a copy of Napoleon Dynamite, but it is stronger and funnier in its humor. The character Napoleon Dynamite was slow, incompetent, not funny, trying to hard, and hard to like for most of the film. The lead character here is an adolescent, following in his footsteps, but seems to be more aware of his surroundings and can actually be called a "worthy hero." With Napoleon, he just wandered around aimlessly on screen for almost two hours stumbling from next plot point to next.

The plot: The story is sort of an anthology showing what a certain group of characters do, then showing what another group of characters were doing while the first were doing it. The stories intervene with each other, and I wasn't expecting this type of film to do that. It works in its favor big time. Geeky Gavin (Sumpter) and his friends Hobie (Palmer) and Maynard (Pinkston) enjoy fighting in their front yard with Styrofoam swords covered in colored tape. One day, Gavin and his buddies go into the woods and find feces and footprints of what they believe is from the Sasquatch.

Gavin continues to visit Sophie (Land) an insecure adolescent who works at the local video store. She is so insecure that she has her dentist uncle wire her mouth shut so she doesn't eat as much. Meanwhile, the two rednecks living next door (Kern and Long) are kept busy all day, and we see their day's work after we see our protagonist's work.

The Gavin character resembles a younger John Heder, the main character in Napoleon Dynamite. The Sophie character resembles Tina Majorino, the love interest in Napoleon Dynamite as well. It isn't hard to note a pattern forming with the characters, and it isn't hard to piece together this is a blatant knockoff of the film. Even Jon Heder makes a cameo appearance. If that isn't the "hey, look at me, I'm just like that guy!" moment I don't know what is.

I'd still go back and watch this before Napoleon because I found these characters so much more likable than the characters in that film. They were more fun to follow and learn about. Their main character doesn't drag his feet thru the storyline.

This isn't by any means a hilarious film, with numerous laughs, and a script to die for. It's a comedy. A decent one. There's parts that I found entertaining, like the scenes with Joey Kern and Justin Long, and parts that disinterested me, like the buildup between the relationship of the teenagers. I felt the film could've been smarter, and not focus on something like that. Still, The Sasquatch Gang manages to be better than the film it is a copy of. I can't say that happens to often in the industry.

Starring: Jeremy Sumpter, Justin Long, Joey Kern, Addie Land, Hubbel Palmer, Rob Pinkston. Directed by: Tim Skousen.

Writer/director Tim Skousen recreates the cultish small-town culture of Napoleon Dynamite with equally absurd but deft strokes. Although The Sasquatch Dumpling Gang largely proves a rehash of the latter, it boasts of a refreshingly crisp non-chronological narrative structure which, in many ways, makes it a more complete film that NP was.

The story is also more focused, zooming in on a nerd gang that stumbles upon Bigfoot findings in the woods. They decide to tell the police and media about it to see if the tracks actually belong to the mythical Sasquatch. It is set in an unnamed small town in America during an unnamed decade. For conflicting clues, the video store only carries VHS format – but ebay.com exists. The nerd gang is headed by Gavin (Jeremy Sumpter) who regrettably never truly embodies the nerd his character is made out to be. By contrast, all other characters gleefully channel Napoleon Dynamite and its sprawling surge of geekdom in the form of recording fantasy films, hanging out in the video store, doing amateur detective work and engaging in medieval sword-fighting.

Let us talk about structure. Clever comic book montages are interjected at the beginning of each new segment and each of these segments tells the story from one or two character's point of view, covering the chain of events with a fresh perspective. The film is only 84 minutes long and it feels every bit as condensed, giving us no remotely disposable passages. Central to all detours and diversions is the mighty Bigfoot and the level of seriousness with which people regard this phenomenon is hilarious. The humour in general is often in-tune and arguably the consistently bare-chested "Shirts" (Joey Kern) sits in the front row for laughter in the film. Indeed, the The Sasquatch Dumpling Gang tips over into absurdist humour with the same frequency as Napoleon Dynamite but it sadly never manages as funny as the latter. This can best be attributed to the lack of novelty of the dark indie quirkiness two years later.

The acting is generally atrocious, it needs to be said. Great comedy often stems from this, but in the end the hamminess of the performers is simply awe-inspiring as they choke on line after line and overdo the absurdity of the situations. Of course, stellar acting is not in focus in a film like this these shortcomings are easily overlooked. I think Tim Skousen has done something rather safe but still enjoyable here: he has taken a big gulp out of nerd culture, nodding politely to Napoleon Dynamite, and plugging his product in with cameos by John Heder and Jon Gries. The Sasquatch Dumpling Gang is funny, quirky, short, sweet and forgettable enough to watch over and over again.

7 out of 10

I saw this film at the Waterfront Film Festival in Saugatuck, Michigan, and it was my favorite film of the festival.

Directed by talented newcomer Tim Skousen, the film follows teen Gavin Gore (wonderfully played by Peter Pan's Jeremy Sumpter) and his three friends after they discover some Bigfoot tracks (and dumplings) in the forest. The fantasy-loving group decides to tell the police and media about it to see if the tracks actually belong to the Sasquatch. Meanwhile, as this is taking place, Gavin's neighbors, patriotic redneck Zerk Wilder and corndog loving Shirts (brilliantly played by Dodgeball's Justin Long and Cabin Fever's Joey Kern) get into some trouble. Zerk will lose his Pontiac Firebird to creditors if he doesn't pay for his credit bills. They decide to use the Sasquatch finding as a way to save the precious car. The two story lines cleverly intertwine and result in many hilarious scenes.

I loved the way the film was written. It's told in a comic book style, with different chapter titles and some of the same scenes from previous chapters appearing in later chapters, just from a different point of view.

I was laughing the whole way through this film. It was produced by the Napoleon Dynamite team and some of the touches from that film can be seen in this. But whether you loved Napoleon Dynamite or hated it, don't let that be the judge of whether you want to see this movie or not. This movie has its own clever and charming characteristics. The characters are all entertaining, the dialogue is hysterical, and it's clear that everyone working on the movie had a great time.

Director Tim Skousen, producers Mark Kassen and Jeremy Coon, and stars Justin Long and Joey Kern were all at the festival to promote the movie and tell stories about the making of it. I talked with them and got to ask some questions about the film and I must say, they were so nice and funny, I wish them all the best with this film and their future projects.

See this film then spread the word.