Thanks to George Cotronis for the recommentation!
The other day, I was trying to make a point on Twitter that I was happy for Jennifer Lawrence that she rejected the idea of signing up for Twitter after all she went through after some asshole hacked her nude selfies and put them online for the world to see. When I was asked to elaborate on my 140-characters wisdom by the internet people, things went downhille fast and I started sounding like some sexual deviant who was angry at Miss Lawrence for posing for one person only. It's not really the person you are inside that matters, it's the person that the others perceive, and it's really difficult to be sensible and eloquent on Twitter.
What happened to me also happens to be the premise of cult horror movie TUCKER AND DALE vs EVIL, a Canadian film about hillbillies and college kids.
I know, right? Another fucking movie about hillbillies and college kids. This one's different, though. The plot of TUCKER AND DALE vs EVIL is based on a huge misunderstanding ased on horror movie culture. A ragtag group of cliché teenagers are going camping into the woods of West Virginia. Of course, they freak out as soon as they meet the first two weird looking hillbillies who happend to be Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) who happen to be rather smart and normal people on their way to their vacation home. The kids are reckless, stupid and mildly drunk at all times, but as soon as thing get weird, they're blaming it on the hillbillies. HAS to be the hillbillies, right? Hilarity ensues!
Comedies are usually movies built for people who don't like movies. Mainstream comedies, at least. They consist in a pile of jokes on a certain theme or not (sometimes it's just slapstick humor), built for the viewer to blow some steam and have a good time. It's why very few straight comedies become iconic movies. TUCKER AND DALE vs EVIL is, philosophically, the polar opposite. It's meant FOR the horror movie fans especially to enjoy. It's a bunch of references to classic slasher movies stringed together and deployed around the misunderstanding of a cinema cliché within a movie. I'm not the most educated horror movie fans, but I've seen my classics and several scenes in TUCKER AND DALE vs EVIL had me laughing uncontrollably loud. Visceral reactions like that are a testament to great comedic writing.
These two looks like normal, upstanding citizens to me. Move along.
Ultimately, TUCKER AND DALE vs EVIL can't avoid its fate as a comedy and runs out of steam after a while. It puts up a valiant effort and remains hilarious for longer than most comedies, but you can only go so far when your movie's built on only one idea. Maybe I'm being unfair to TUCKER AND DALE vs EVIL. Maybe it's just that, like too many other stories, they just couldn't figure out the ending. Once the characters settle on who's good and who's bad, it becomes a pretty straightforward, almost cliché horror movie featuring two anti-heroes. The movie seems extremely self-aware of clichés (and I believe of that very issue), so it tries to go overboard with slapstick humor, but it doesn't live up to the early standards it set for itself.
I can't say that TUCKER AND DALE vs EVIL is a disappointment though. Not in any way. I love stories that are openly challenging the clichés of their genre and this is one of these, and it has a good-natured way to go about it. It's still a bona fide comedy, which exists for the sake of making you laugh and helping you blow some steam, rather than a comedic movie like THE BIG LEBOWSKI for example, which might just be what keeps TUCKER AND DALE vs EVIL from being a legend. It's still worth at least a viewing, guys if not two or three. for it's a film with a genuine sense of humor and a head on its shoulders. You won't get much more than a good laugh out of it, but it'll be a harder, more visceral laugh than what you're used to. It's a movie with humble goals, but it's awesome at it.
