Nature Calls

And this isn't one of them. There really is no plot, and it seems to focus on 3 idiot adults rather than the adventure. I actually get some enjoyment of of Bushwhacked, and this movie seems like a rip off of that.

I'd consider this a late-night comedy if you truly have seen better movies too many times and want to watch the worst camp movie of all time.

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.

A truly bizarre film. It has the premise of a heart-warming family comedy, with a troop of little kids and an earnest scout master who wants to instil love of the outdoors in some sheltered suburbanites (with the expected undertone of weird US nationalist propaganda American films like this seem legally obligated to have). But while it more or less delivers the by the book plot and emotional beats you'd imagine such a film would have, it does so with constant swearing, lewd dialogue, and a slew of adult characters who seem to have wandered in from a National Lampoon movie. Even with this jarring hodgepodge, there were dramatic beats that were cheesy but would have been serviceable enough if they had done the absolutely bare minimum to develop the characters. Randy and Kirk are brothers but have no relationship and nothing whatsoever is offered to explain why Randy loves their father's scout mission so much while Kirk is not just indifferent, he hates the entire concept of nature. You expect some kind of backstory to eventually come up, but it never does, even when the pair have a serious scene together. There's nothing to invest in.

I don't understand who this movie is for or for whom it would even be appropriate. Overall it can only appeal to kids and stars five too many ten year-olds for teenagers to be interested, but it's from the perspective of the adults and full of adult jokes (not just rude, but rude and jaded in ways kids won't find funny). There's also a bunch of irreverent religious 'humour' coexisting with a weird conservative streak as if events were taking place simultaneously in a John Waters movie and in the land of Leave it to Beaver. It really is like two completely different scripts with wildly different sensibilities crashed into each other at high speed and somehow merged.

It's not totally joyless, I did actually laugh a bit, even if more often out of shock and confusion than at punchlines. The actors seem equally uncertain what kind of tone they should be going for, though they make an admirable attempt to give it energy and momentum. Two major characters carrying most of the emotional load of the story are mute for no adequately explained reason and this compounds the already profound issue of lack of character development. Patton Oswalt was just boring and flat and the only one who tries to play it as if it were that milquetoast family film throughout, while everyone else at least commits to the insanity level that seems necessary. He can't really act and he doesn't get to be funny so I don't know what the thinking was, all I know is he failed to carry this movie and there are three people who could have done better right there in the cast. I had to watch it through my fingers out of second hand embarrassment at times and I'm left wondering how on earth this happened.

Just because this movie is a little different and doesn't pander to contemporary American sensibilities, doesn't mean it's horrible or has a bad script.

Like I said it is a little different and vulgar at times. But it is entertaining and Patton Oswalt holds it together very nicely.

Johnny Knocksville & Ron Riggle are at first hard to handle but I thought they were funny and a good addition to the story.

It actually has a some very good messages about respecting nature and remembering to sometimes forget about modern technologies and to go have fun outside.

Stop hating on this movie!!

The first time I tried to watch this movie I literally fell asleep 4 minutes in. Against my better judgement, I tried to watch the rest later. It's amazing that Oswalt, Knoxville and Riggle could have made such an unfunny and boring movie but they did. Don't waste your time.