2 gibbles out of 5

Directors: Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim

I like Tim & Eric.  So do other people.  And we all agree: it’s an acquired taste.

What did I expect from a Tim & Eric movie?  Good question.  Not a plot.  That’s what.   I expected a gross-out poop joke: met and exceeded.  I expected bizarre editing choices: sure.  I expected some recurring characters: not really.  But a plot?  That seemed out of the question.  I assumed this was going to be a Brain Candy type movie, a very loose structure woven together by mini-sketches.  Instead, we get an awesomely pitch-perfect more-than-I-could’ve-hoped-for hilarious opening scene that sets the stage for a plausible setup… and then we get all stalled up with that dang plot.

If you’re unfamiliar with T&E, perhaps you’re unfamiliar with the Old Spice ads they did.  Do you remember some Old Spice ads going back a couple years with some beefy gentleman saying odd, witty thing?  More witty than you’d expect from deoderant commericals?  That was Tim and Eric.  “Oh my, how palatable,” you say, “I’d better rush on down to the nickelodeon and have my peepers take a gander at this Timothy and Eric.”  Well hold your horses, grammy, and maybe watch some youtube videos of their not-made-for-daytime-TV stuff.  I first ‘met’ Tim and Eric through Tom Goes to the Mayor on Adult Swim.  Aqua Teen had gotten me used to a healthy dose of random, but “Tom” was an entirely different story.  Not only was the animation style sort of abrasive, but the humor was off from both the Aqua Teen vibe and the more deadpan humor of the station’s Sealab, or whatever else.  But I gave it a chance… and if you’re willing to give it a chance, the chance is you’ll get hooked.  I ended up watching most of the series over a weekend.

And then they had their own show (‘Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!’), which incorporated a ton of live action stuff.  And it was weirder.  The off-kilter humor was in place, but getting away from the format of a plotted series allowed them to go apeshit with their humor, which is all kinds of gross and stupid and uncomfortable.  And yet, there’s this odd obliviousness to it that prevents it from being American Pie-style grossout humor.

What’s the movie about, then?  Good question.  Tim and Eric play Tim and Eric, who get a bazillion dollars to make a movie which they squander on a 2-minute long short film.  They then have to find a way to pay the studio back that bazillion dollars.  The opening is epic.  The opening is everything good about the show.  Will Ferrell pops in to tell them that they can run his mall and earn a bazillion dollars.  So they do that.  Cue mall renovation for the next fifty minutes or so.  This is the big downfall of the movie.  Series regular John C. Reilly comes in to play a sickly caretaker at the mall, and instead of being grossly funny, his character is just annoying.  Eric has a love interest, but instead of playing this up for all the uncomfortable humor they’re good at, it’s played…. mostly… straight, and sort of falls flat.  Basically, the gang spends time actually arranging the plot threads to arrive at their ending, which is, again, epic-ly funny.  It’s just too bad about the really lame middle portion.

I’ll have to watch this again at some point, and I bet a DVD version will have ridiculous extras, but a raucous beginning is, unfortunately, a big letdown for a boring, slow middle.  And I dislike Will Forte’s screamy persona.  Womp.

One poop joke to rule them all...

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