Brought to you by the same team as 2001’s comedic work of art, ‘Super Troopers’, this entry to their CV is a step down, but still worthy of some note.
A psycho serial killer (is there any other kind?) is running rampage on an island resort run by Coconut Pete, a fading junkie singer songwriter who only ever sings about getting wasted in a tropical paradise. The hunt is on to find the killer as more and more of the staff are killed via methods inspired by Coconut Pete’s lyrics. Bill Paxton plays the ageing hippy Coconut Pete to fantastic effect and is easily the best thing in the entire film.
Let me honest up front (have I ever been any other way?) and say that this is not a good film. In fact, in many ways, it is a dreadful film (pun intended).
It starts out very promisingly but soon descends into just a number of crude, rude jokes, many of which just aren’t funny. However, the director manages to keep you interested by keeping the film somewhere between a skilful pastiche of teen serial killer movies and a total gross out comedy. It is part ‘Porkies’ and part ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ when it was still good.
For the intellectuals amongst you, the film is full of post-modern, existential images of women in bikinis and some wearing even less, thus exploring the depiction of the female form in today’s society and their perception through synergistic responses vis-a-vis all other forms of media consumed by the populace as a whole. For those of you who are not pretentious liberals, lots of girls in coconut bikinis and wet t-shirts.
OVERALL SUMMARY
The film does have some very funny, laugh-out-loud moments but these are unfortunately few and far between. I believe that this bunch of friends (who call themselves ‘Broken Lizard’) have better work in side of them, and I look forward to their next excursion into film-making mischief.