Hell and Back

HELL AND BACK review by: Mike Smith "Fat Mike"

Three friends embark on a wayward journey into the deepest, darkest depths of hell to rescue one of their own. While navigating their escape, they provoke a slew of misfit demons, a super sexy angel, an infamous Greek legend and the Devil himself.

After seeing this trailer I couldn't wait to see this independent film! The cast is full of talent and some of my favorite comedians and voice actors. Nick Swardson, Mila Kunis, T.J. Miller, Rob Riggle, Susan Sarandon, Danny McBride and Bob Odenkirk voice the main cast. I was more impressed with the costar talent made up of Brian Posehn, Maria Bamford, Kyle Kinane, Kumail Nanjiani, Greg Proops, Paul Scheer, J.B. Smoove, Dana Snyder, Paul F. Tompkins and the legendary H. Jon Benjamin as "The Tree". Unfortunately, as talented as the cast is, I felt little to no connection to the main characters.

That being said, the story is good, ridiculous and funny; the jokes are crude and at times, laugh out loud funny. The best part of this film is the animation, stop motion animation is far and few between these days and I always strongly enjoy seeing the art form.

Hell And Back is a fun ride with good adult laughs and a great cast. The only downfall I had was the lack of connection with the main characters and that this film is forgettable. But I would recommend checking it out. Cheers and remember life won't suck as long as there is a good movie to watch.

6.5 out of 10

edited by Samantha Locke

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You wonder what the attraction is for the makers for "Chicken Run", "Box Trolls" and for the Bro Comedy "Hell and Back" to stop motion animation. It's not as if going through the painstaking and laborious process automatically yields a visual character superior to less labor- intensive production methods. So why not just make it a cartoon? Anyway, the plainly descriptive-titled "Hell and Back" lifts the way Satan from South Park is rendered whole, gives him "Breaking Bad's" Bob Odenkirk's voice and drops him in a bro comedy. There he trades the standard bro jokes (mostly homosexual panic quips) with the slackers who inadvertently fall into his underground realm. None of it is terribly entertaining but there are enough laughs to make it all fairly innocuous.

What does that mean? Well, I jump from enjoying it to not enjoying and back again.

The animation is exquisite, the acting is exquisite, the characters are distinct and fun, the story is really clever and the music is awesome...

But the one-liners! Oh my God, the characters cannot go anywhere do anything or barely move the story along without saying something obnoxious. For every funny joke in the film there's like 20 obnoxious ones! I would have loved this in middle school when we were hitting puberty and learning how to be radical, so maybe this movie is for them.

That being said i've watched this movie a lot. There was so much atmosphere and passion in the thing that it was my go to during an emotionally trying time. It just seemed to have that very strong distracting quality you look for in good entertainment.

But it's still a 6 because there is A LOT of stupid, pointless, strangle the bobble head one-liners! It's going to kill it for most people.

This film is very well done. Its a dumb comedy for smart people. The people writng the bad reviews are also the ones that review local soup kitchens and taco bells. There are big names in comedy and people think this is not funny? The IQ of the country has plummeted over the last 20 years, so I'm not surprised people complained about this one. I love how offensive this is and i really really love how badly it upset people! That's actually the best part of the movie.

This film is very well done. Its a dumb comedy for smart people. The people writng the bad reviews are also the ones that review local soup kitchens and taco bells. There are big names in comedy and people think this is not funny? The IQ of the country has plummeted over the last 20 years, so I'm not surprised people complained about this one. I love how offensive this is and i really really love how badly it upset people! That's actually the best part of the movie.

"Hell & Back" poses a sharp contrast in quality between the wealth of its talented voice cast and the sheer pedestrian mediocrity of its screenplay. It's amazing that a barrage of talented and proved comics from the likes of T.J. Miller, Mila Kunis, Bob Odenkirk, and J.B. Smoove, would subject themselves to something so bland and ugly. From its choppy stop-motion style of animation, its lack of real creativity in its jokes, and its miserable color palette, there is a striking joylessness present in "Hell & Back" that is only highlighted by the film's lackluster writing.

The story opens in a failing theme-park, largely run by slacker employees Remy (voiced by Nick Swardson), Augie (T.J. Miller), and Curt (Rob Riggle). When Curt borrows a mint from Remy, taking a blood oath to pay him back before reneging on his promise shortly after, the three are sucked into a vortex that takes them to Hell, where they are seen as "mortals" awaiting sacrifice. While Curt is the only one who is set to be sacrificed, for breaking a blood oath, Remy and Augie are also planned to be executed simply because of their presence in Hell as mortals. As a result, they team up with a demon named Deema (Mila Kunis), who is searching for Orpheus, a famous spirit who is said to have saved countless mortals who's souls were doomed to perish in Hell in time before the Devil (Bob Odenkirk) decides to sacrifice the three men.

Despite the high stakes, the film feels like a constant array of tired stoner jokes written by a gang of adolescents that still find using at least two curse words in every sentence is hilarious. Admittedly, however, the film did get some laughs out of me when the small-scale, background jokes took over. Consider the scenes that involve the demons of Hell tempting the souls by having a Taco Bell/Pizza Hut counter. When one of the souls requests a pepperoni pizza, the demon informs him that they only have the Pizza Hut sign up as decoration and they are only a Taco Bell. "Welcome to Hell," the demon says whilst giggling, upon informing the poor soul. This happens a couple of other times in the film and works because of how simply outlandish and ridiculous the scene plays out, in addition to a few scenes of demons looking up the sins of the souls to see what constitutes their presence in Hell.

These scenes are few and far between, however, as the bulk of the film has Remy and Augie bumbling on to random setpieces in Hell, witnessing some crass display of juvenile gags all captured in some of the most visually ugly scenery I've seen all year. With all the lame jokes occurring and the setting feeling so dim and dingy, there's simply very little positivity in this film to keep an upbeat frame of mine. Comedies set in underworlds or places of little hope obviously have difficultly meriting this constant stream of upbeat humor in contrast to the setting, but when both elements fall apart here, "Hell & Back" doesn't have a leg to stand on, frankly.

Finally, there's a real cheapness to the animation here. The stop-motion animation is evidently rushed, as characters, especially when walking or moving very quickly, show a peculiar jerkiness to their motions that indicates that figures' poses were shifted too quickly, and thus, don't appear fluid. This doesn't occur frequently, but when it does, it makes the whole film seem off balance, and, much like the writing, poorly conceived.

I remember hearing of "Hell & Back" earlier in the year and thought it would be something of a box office surprise; we rarely get adult animated films, and if we do, they are usually so obsessed with the idea of being vulgar and animated ("Cheech and Chong's Animated Movie" and "Jay and Silent Bob's Super Groovy Cartoon Movie" to name a few) that they wind up being throwaway projects of little merit. I felt that the talented cast of this particular film would crush that stereotype and lift it up to certain quality. Unfortunately, with the startlingly silent marketing for the film and the quiet release, "Hell & Back" will likely join other contemporaries as an experiment that failed largely because of its worst tendencies.