Caffeinated Clint
As Whitesnake like to say occasionally chant on my car stereo, here we go again..
Unless you’re a newly-licensed driver with liquor in your system, keep driving.
Okay, maybe that’s not the case at all. “Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar movie” may simply have been lost on me because I hadn’t seen the TV series that preceded it. Also probably doesn’t help that I haven’t done a beer bong for about twenty years. Maybe it’s a combo of both those things? After all, that was the case with “Kevin & Perry go Large” and “The Inbetweeners”, also based on popular TV series, and both of which many claimed as funny if not funnier than the TV shows that inspired the movies. And though they say you’re never too old for some things, I’m inclined to believe the statement doesn’t apply to these beer, bong and pissfarting-around comedies.
Seems there comes a time when young teenager leaking on another teenager’s head just isn’t that funny anymore. Or sneaking into a girl’s locker room with a camera and a carrot doesn’t impress like it did when one was 19. Probably just where I am in my life. I like my comedies a little wittier and less juvenile than the films I mentioned before. I like your “American Pie” and many of Kevin Smith’s movies (and I loved the new “21 Jump Street movie”, and that’s as ridiculously smutty and silly as one could imagine!), even with their plethora of slightly offensive and immature content, but the thing that separates those films from say ”Tim & Eric” is that they feel more like movies – with characters, character arcs and at least some embodiment of real life about them. “Tim & Eric” is simply a couple of cartoons getting up to all sorts of tomfoolery for an hour-and-a-half. You don’t much care about either character, the plot or, quite frankly, have much luck in finding any well-written jokes. I’m no prude, I even got one or two laughs out of “Freddy got Fingered” back in the day, but I can’t recall one genuinely funny, well-crafted gag – okay, so there’s a ‘Top Gun’ joke that came close to molding a smile – in ”Tim & Eric’s” movie.
Written and directed by Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, creators of sketch comedy series ”Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!”, the film sees the titular duo having to find a billion bucks to pay back a movie mogul (Robert Loggia, trying his best) for wasting his cash on their inept movie. The duo explore all sorts of avenues to get the money – including managing a bankrupt shopping mall that’s such a dump only a wolf eats from it’s food court.
A couple of days after the screening the only thing I could remember about the movie, when speaking to a colleague about it, is that Will Ferrell & John C.Reilly made superfluous cameos, also that the actor portraying Johnny Depp in the films first few minutes was a good match for the real thing, and that, if only because it was the only moment that garnered this old guy’s attention, it needed more ”Top Gun” jokes.
If it hadn’t have cost to hire the thing on VOD (and if Ray Wise, William Atherton and the aforesaid Loggia hadn’t have reared their heads), I likely would’ve switched to a re-reun of the Travis Fimmel-starring “Tarzan”. Yes, you heard me.
So I guess I’m putting this one out to you guys – do I have to be a fan of Tim and Eric’s work to appreciate the movie or, for those that have seen it, is it just a lame movie?
