Sorry about that.
At the end of the credits for Kevin Smith's Yoga Hosers, there is a line proclaiming that the main characters, the Colleens, will return in the future. The name of their next movie is even given. Whether this is intended as a joke or a promise, those who have watched Yoga Hosers are more apt to view it as a threat.
With the movie, Smith—who, as he regularly does, serves as both writer and director—revisits characters and themes we have seen before. However, rather than functioning as a greatest hits moment for Smith, Yoga Hosers serves up a bunch of lowlights.
Smith returns to his last film, Tusk, to find the main characters – Colleen McKenzie (Harley Quinn Smith, Kevin Smith's daughter) and Colleen Collette (Lily-Rose Depp). In Tusk, the younger Smith and Depp play cameo roles as Canadian convenience store clerks working at the Eh-2-Zed. They have little to do and it functions mainly as an amusing reference to Smith's previous convenience store- and mall-based films.
In Yoga Hosers, the two characters again have little to do but are front and center. They are still working at the convenience store, go to high school, and post every moment of their lives on social media. There is a killer on the loose, or maybe more than one, but for much of Yoga Hosers' run, that darker story plays second fiddle to watching the clueless shenanigans of two high school sophomores and the at-best-comical Canadian accents offered up by a spate of actors.
The audience watches helplessly as the Colleens go to a yoga studio where they are taught, poorly, by Yogi Bayer (Justin Long), an instructor who fails to realize just why the owners of Yogi Bear might not like his name or how they might own a cartoon character. The audience is forced to sit through Colleen C complaining about the romantic relationship her father (Tony Hale) has with Eh-2-Zed manager, Tabitha (Natasha Lyonne), and worse, Tabitha's using the relationship to make the Colleens' lives more difficult. On and on the movie lurches from one scene of the teens (and others) being horrible and clueless to the next one and to the next one after that.
Unlike some of Kevin Smith's other work, there doesn't seem to be a particular reason to depict people in this manner. There is no real larger argument at work; it is just an attempt at generating humor. Certainly, the Colleens obsession with their cell phones is meant to function as a cultural critique, a swipe at a younger generation, but the movie has absolutely nothing to say about the nature of cell phone use other than that kids spend a lot of time on their phones. Particularly with the elder Smith directing his daughter, it comes off much more as an old man complaint about what these young whippersnappers are doing than it does a comment on the direction of our society.
Johnny Depp, father of Lily-Rose Depp, appears in the film as well, reprising his role of Guy Lapointe from Tusk. It makes little to no sense in the context of the story, but the story as a whole makes little sense. Somehow, before things are done, the entire affair devolves into a science fiction tale involving Satanists, Nazis, and foot-tall living Nazi sausages referred to as Bratzis (and played by Kevin Smith).
The most basic problem with Smith's film is that it simply is not funny. The closest it gets is a handful of minor chuckles mixed amongst a much louder, more plentiful set of groans. Certainly the final sentence of the preceding paragraph indicates a distinct potential for laughs, but Yoga Hosers never finds them and ends up as unappetizing as the inside of a Bratzi (which are routinely put on display).
A cynical take on the film would suggest it exists due to no small degree of nepotism, and it is a claim that might be bolstered when one considers that Harley Quinn Smith and Lily-Rose Depp are not only the main actors, but featured on the soundtrack as well. Whether that point of view is valid is not something that can accurately be assessed without being inside the mind of the filmmakers. However, it is safe to assume that many who leave the film will walk away with that impression.
The Verdict
Initially, Yoga Hosers may appear as an updated version of Clerks that simply happens to take place in Canada and that it will examine some of the same ideas from that movie and how the world has changed 20 years on. That notion is quickly dismissed with the appearance of Nazis, Bratzis, ridiculous detectives, Satanists, and countless other foolish elements. As it plays out, more and more outlandish pieces are added, seemingly in a vain attempt to get something to stick. None of it does. Yoga Hosers is akin to the filmic version of the monstrous creations it depicts.
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