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Here's Massawyrm!
Hola all. Massawyrm here. You know, sometimes there are things in this world that are just too easy, the type of things my father tried to instill in me that it was “Better to walk away” from. As a man, I’ve tried to live up to that ideal. If a drooling retarded kid off his meds walks up to you and tries to pick a fight – you just walk away. I mean, who really wants to be the guy known for picking on the re-re?
But sometimes, just sometimes, that little mongoloid bastard needs to learn an important life lesson.
Such is the case with the insipid, mind numbing little piece of drek R.V. Normally, after viewing a film like this, I’d think “Dude, it’s just not worth it.” I mean, do I really want to spend the next hour or two actually thinking about this? Do I really want to expend the energy it would take to review it? After all, that Atari Flashback is looking mighty lonesome up there on the entertainment center, and I could be playing Asteroids instead. But you know what? RV has it coming. While it’s certainly not the worst movie I’ve ever seen, I’m pretty sure there’s a level of hell that will be showing it for quite a while. Pedantic, puerile and as low brow as they come, R.V. is nothing but a low quality retread of the National Lampoon’s Vacation films – without so much as a lick of the charm that those films possessed early in the series.
But you could tell that from the trailers, right? No. The trailer doesn’t do this film one bit of justice. I mean, what Barry Sonnenfeld accomplishes here is nothing short of heroic. He’s condensed all of the boredom, repetitiveness and sheer nerve fraying obnoxiousness of a 31-hour road trip into a 98-minute experience. Without leaving the taste of Orange Slices and Coca-Cola in your mouth. It’s bad, terribly bad. And yet, it occurs to me that while making one of the most lowbrow comedies to hit screens in…oh who the fuck am I kidding…since the Benchwarmers 3 weeks ago…that this film actually somehow imagines that it is high entertainment.
While there aren’t rules to making films, there certainly are guidelines – specific things that you do or don’t do to ensure that you don’t set yourself up for easy criticism. For example, if the humor of your film is entirely garnered from exploding septic tanks, unmanned vehicle antics, bad driving jokes (Look! He ran over/smashed into something else!) and the goofy facial expressions that are generated by all three – you do not, I repeat, DO NOT, make fun of Ernest Goes to Jail. Or any of the Ernest films for that matter. It just invites far too easy a comparison. Secondly, you do not under any circumstance name a centerpiece of your film (in this case, the R.V.) “The Big Rolling Turd.”
Do you folks see what I’m getting at here? It’s as if Barry Sonnenfeld walked into the theatre carrying a silver platter with our reviews on it already written for us. So without stooping to the easy jokes folks, I’m just gonna say (INSERT JOKE HERE.) There, have you made yourself giggle a bit? Good. Then it turns out Barry Sonnenfeld DOES still have the ability to make people laugh.
But this film certainly suffers from a hell of a lot more problems than the obvious ones. The biggest problem of course is that this is a Robin Williams vehicle (seriously, no pun intended. Don’t even think of pinning that shit on me.) Now Robin Williams is a solid actor – I would even say a great actor – when given the right material. That material is often dark and requires a lot of range. Williams has a lot of range, from the Creepy photo shop clerk in One Hour Photo to the shy doctor in Awakenings, so it works. What Robin Williams is not good in, surprisingly enough, is comedy. He’s terrible. Why on Earth would anyone in their right mind cast Robin Williams in a comedy film…and not let him be Robin Williams? When it comes to comedy, Williams is good at one thing – going psycho-binko crazy and streaming off into tangential messes of logic that are funny as all hell. Anyone who dare says Robin Williams isn’t funny any more didn’t watch Robin Willaims: Live (a comedy routine I’ve listened to dozens of times.)
Some people love his comedy (like me) others hate it. That’s fine. It happens. But if you’re going to use him, and try to draw in the audience that loves him, let him be Robin fucking Williams. If it’s a scripted role, have a chunk in the script that says “Robin does his thing here – cut appropriately for pacing.” That’s effectively what they did in Aladdin – and it worked. He was a perfect choice for it and part of the reason that that film is infinitely rewatchable (and quotable.) In R.V., however, Robin is only let out to play for 5 to 10 seconds at a time before he’s reeled back in to play the role of Clark Griswald. No, that’s not his name here, but it may as well be. Williams just feels to restrained, like he wants to go all out, but can’t because he has to play an oafish but loving father. If you don’t want Robin to be Robin, don’t bother getting Robin. Get Tim Allen. If he’s busy, get Patrick Warburton. Or wait for Tim Allen’s schedule to clear up.
Otherwise, this film suffers from all the problems you’d expect from a lowbrow, rated PG family comedy. It’s a steady stream of cheap gags completely devoid of anything sharp or clever worth mentioning. The characters are almost entirely unlikable, from the bizarre R.V. traveling family played as best as possible by Jeff Daniels and the amazingly talented Kristin Chenoweth, to the obnoxious son and daughter (the daughter played by ‘teen R&B sensation’ JoJo – who I swear to god, I wanted to hit with a brick every time she opened her mouth during the first half of the film), on up to Williams himself, who you can only sympathize with because you see exactly what he has to put up with. Predictable, unimaginative and far from anything resembling funny, R.V. is an accident waiting to happen (There, you see what you made me do Sonnenfeld? I couldn’t resist. Eternity in critic hell awaits me for that one comment alone.)
Recommended for fans of Ernest movies or people who love road trip movies so much that they even enjoyed National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation. Definitely not recommended for anyone whose asshole puckered up tighter than a drum when they saw the trailer.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em. I know I will.
Massawyrm
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