Father's Day (2011)

Author: Brett Gallman
Submitted by: Brett Gallman   Date : 2012-02-08 07:52
{_BLOCK_.MAIN.PAGE_ADMIN}



Written by: Adam Brooks, Jeremy Gillespie, Matthew Kennedy, Conor Sweeney, and Steven Kostanski (all credited as Astro-6)
Directed by: Adam Brooks, Jeremy Gillespie, Matthew Kennedy, and Conor Sweeney (as Astro-6)
Starring: Adam Brooks, Mackenzie Murdock and Matthew Kennedy


Reviewed by: Brett Gallman





Lock up your fathers.


Thirty years ago, Troma turned Mother’s Day into a bloodstained spot on the calendar, and now they’re back to do the same with Father’s Day. The formula hasn’t changed much in three decades, as Lloyd Kaufman has found the type of demented movie to serve as the spiritual successor to the oozy sleaze that lined video store shelves during the studio’s glory days. Astron-6, the writer and director of Father’s Day, is actually a composite name of five different guys, all of whom probably grew up renting those Troma tapes, and it feels like they’ve tried to cram every inspiration they ever gained from them in one movie.

Father’s Day doesn’t seem to actually take place on the actual holiday; instead, it refers to notorious serial killer Chris Fuchman (yes, pronounced “Fuck-Man”), who has been killing fathers for something like thirty years. When Fuchman re-emerges, a young priest (Matthew Kennedy) seeks the help of vigilante Ahab (Adam Brooks), who has spent most of his life tracking down the now mythical killer. He reluctantly joins Father Sullivan when he realizes it could give him a chance to reunite with his estranged sister (Amy Groening) who is now (of course) a stripper.


Father’s Day is yet another nostalgia-fetish piece, meant to remind us that there were once movies like this but never really giving us much of a reason to watch this one instead of those better ones. Don’t get me wrong--it sort of feels like a Troma movie, and it takes all of about two minutes before you see a guy feasting on someone’s intestines, making it patently obvious why Troma graced it with their brand. So it’s extremely gross, gory, and only moderately-acted (at best), just like any other Troma flick you’ve seen, and it’s even being sold in a now-moldy retro package; instead of the grindhouse, though, this one is taking you back to late night TV movie blocks, as Father’s Day is being presented as programming on “ASTR-TV Channel 6."

As such, you’ve got faux grain and wear and tear to create the illusion that this is a lost Troma movie, one that’s been cobbled together from the nostalgic scraps these guys are carrying around. It’s difficult to deny their passion or commitment to matching the puerile transgressiveness you associate with Troma, though. Father’s Day is outrageous and twisted in the best possible way, full of over-the-top mutilations and disgusting gags. You might take it seriously for a few minutes, but then you realize you’re watching a movie with an effeminate main character that’s actually named Twink, just in case you weren’t sure. A lot of the humor is consistently stupid, and the film tries to compensate by stuffing too many ideas and modes into its 95 minute run-time. I’d say it’s completely irreverent tonally, but it actually chokes on its reverence for the films it’s aping. Ahab is obviously a riff on Snake Plissken, so the film can hit the gritty badass beats of vigilante flicks before hitting all of the other ridiculous plot points (Gun toting priest? Got it. Incest? Check. Penis mutilation? Multiple ones!). By the time Father’s Day wraps up, the street-justice flick that it began as seems quaint and normal by comparison. Somehow, it eventually takes a detour into hell in a sequence that feels like Jigoku made over by Tromaville (where Lloyd Kaufman makes one of his better cameos to date).

However, for a film that’s brimming with all this insanity, Father’s Day feels listless, lacking the manic energy and inspired performances necessary to bring something like this to life. The film is more than solidly put together and even contains plenty of cool visuals and panache--it’s just that the whole thing just sort of feels like empty fetishism. We’ve enjoyed movies like this before, so here’s another one dutifully trotted out, content to coast on the outrageous splatstick spirit that inspired the film. Something like Father’s Day should be much more fun, but it sometimes just lumbers along, and it doesn’t help that its eventual twists and turns are telegraphed (when Fuchman is unceremoniously dispatched at around the hour mark, you know something else has to happen). I think the most telling moment came about halfway through the film, when we suddenly are taken to a “commercial break” that advertises the film following Father’s Day: Star Raiders, an obvious a take-off of campy sci-fi flicks that actually made me perk up. Suddenly, I realized that I didn’t really care if we even went back to Father‘s Day. Like the main feature, the Star Raiders trailer is full of silly, fun-looking moments, but I imagine that even it’d probably be pretty laborious if stretched out to feature length.

That’s sort of the problem with Father’s Day--it feels like a joke concept stretched out beyond its means. Even its title just seems to be an obvious play on an infamous Troma movie, with little thought put behind it otherwise. I don’t think it’s a terrible movie (well, it is by certain standards, but consider its pedigree), but it’s one that feels a little undercooked. If you actually came across Father’s Day on TV late one night, I imagine you’d have a little fun with it before changing the channel to something else. Of course, you'll probably never see it on TV; instead, you’ll have to check it out during its limited theatrical run for now, where I imagine the film will really come alive with the right crowd. When surrounded by like-minded gorehounds and sleaze-purveyors, Father’s Day would probably be a blast because it is gloriously tasteless and slickly done. The conglomerate that is Astro-6 (who also act in the film) do have their hearts and minds in the right place, which is in the gutter; however, their film sometimes spins its wheels in its attempt to get out of it. Rent it!



comments powered by Disqus Ratings: