Tusk
Director: Kevin Smith
(Blu-ray/DVD)
B
After delivering a few sharp efforts right out of the gate, writer/director Kevin Smith became as lax, predictable and increasingly off-putting as those hockey jerseys he wears like a uniform. For more than a decade, the bar for his movies has been set awfully low, yet along comes the bonkers Tusk to clear it with air to spare. Accounting for much of its success is that, as with 2011’s Red State, Tusk bears next to none of that Kevin Smith feel — one of pot worship, infantile humor and fanboy-pandering in-jokes.
Ironically, Tusk’s most Smith-y element can be found in the arrogant, immature, insensitive lead character. He’s Wallace (Justin Long, Drag Me to Hell), a podcaster with a porn ’stache who makes bank by tracking down and interviewing weirdos. His latest target to exploit takes him o’er the border to Canada, until an unforeseen turn of events leaves Wallace high and dry and desperate for content.
One plot-convenient urination in a bar bathroom later, he’s pissed himself into a lucky break by learning via handbill of local retired seaman Howard Howe (Michael Parks, Django Unchained), a crusty coot who has many weird tales to share about his ocean voyages of yesteryear. Wallace takes the bait … and a cup of drugged tea, waking up to learn Howard’s true intentions: to turn him into a walrus. Let the body horror begin!
Tusk is essentially Smith’s entry in the Human Centipede sweepstakes, yet explicitly a comedy. And with Parks chewing the scenery and a surprise A-lister all but unrecognizable as an Inspector Clouseau type, it is funny … just not to all tastes; dark humor rarely is, which is why it’s so often misunderstood. While the film shows seams of padding in its expansion from a literal joke in Smith’s own podcast to a lark of a feature, it’s the scenes between those seams that count, and Tusk has several you not only haven’t seen before, but won’t be able to unsee ever. Not that I would try, given the flick’s unexpectedly high repeatability factor.
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This random movie review escaped from the archives of Flick Attack.
