What is it about puppets that fascinates us so much? I mean, the outreach of Jim Henson’s Creature Workshop is staggering, between the Muppets, Sesame Street and their other miscellaneous works. Maybe it’s as an extension of our reaction to ventriloquist dummies and how a decent performer can convince an audience that the object made of felt with a hand shoved up its rear, or maybe it’s because we are willing to accept some aspects of the Uncanny Valley which some of the better puppets can reach; either way, it has served as a source of comedy for a long time now. Of course, being the age that we live in, they have also been used to further the tradition of taking all that is child-friendly and twisting them until the heads of their souls drop off. Whether it’s the transgressive humour of Meet The Feebles, the bitingly relatable musical Avenue Q or the numerous YouTube accounts that have made use of how relatively cheap it can be to make puppets, the more adult audiences have been able to enjoy this phena-mahna (da-doo-da-doodoo) as well. Time for our first dive into the realm of all things fuzzy on this blog, as we take another look at the filmography of Bill Zebub and, at least in my case, hope for something a bit better than last time.
The plot: Erin (Erin Brown) has a crush on her roommate Lydia (Lydia Lael), but she is currently dating a puppet. While Erin tries to find a way to get Lydia for herself, Barbara (Bil Zebub), a puppet in human form, is subjected to the prejudices that the puppet minority are subjected to. At least, I think that’s what’s going on.
It’s so good to know that Zebub’s directorial trends are
still in full force here(!) We still have painfully slow sex scenes, although
here I can only assume that they are non-consensual because regardless of
context, the actresses look seriously uncomfortable. Then again, they are
having sex with children’s toys, and I’m not expecting everyone to handle the
possibility as well as Kimberly Kane when she was in Katy Pervy. However,
points given for at least having enough of a plot, or script in general, to not
just be about the awkwardly shot sex scenes. Instead, Zebub branches out to
film even more scenes as jarringly as possible. Outside of his narrative films,
Zebub is probably best known for his heavy metal documentaries, and a lot of
the scenes here feel like unused insert shots from metal music videos. When the
camera isn’t leering directly at the female cast members in skimpy lingerie, as
woman are want to do when they are home alone, it’s randomly showing footage of
cats on set just walking around. If this was a YouTube exclusive, at least the
cat inserts would make a little bit
of sense; here, it just feels out-of-place and meant to pad out this already 2
hour long film. All I can really assume from all this is that Zebub originally
wanted to film a Cookie Mongoloid music video, but they weren’t interested and
he had to use that footage elsewhere; hence, whatever the hell this is.
Speaking of padding, it is here that I am actively starting
to miss Loving A Vegetable in terms of writing. As drawn out as it was, it at
least had a reasonable progression to it: Man talks to victim, man rapes
victim, repeat three more times, end credits. Here, the film keeps jumping
around between what’s happening to Erin and Barbara, without any logical
progression between what happens to either of them. Far as I can tell, this
film seems to exist solely to bring up semi-reasonable set-ups for “thought-provoking”
conversations. Either that, or extremely lame jokes, like having a Cookie
Monster stand-in called Kake Monster that eats shit or the painfully forced
puns like when puppet Jesus (yes, there’s a puppet Jesus) who gets crucified and
says “This is embarrass-king. I’m the embarrass-king of the Jews.” I can’t even
process what kind of person it takes to actively write that for whatever
reason, whether the person saying it is meant to be stupid or not.
As for the commentary Zebub wants to make, it’s of the “Why
are you people so stupid?” brand of religious questioning. This time around
though, I will admit that it does bring up a couple of decent points, like how
some Christians will protest horror movies being released but be perfectly fine
with showing pre-schoolers an effigy of a man being crucified and bled to
death. There’s also some statements made about how those who are overly PC,
like the needlessly demanding feminists who want everyone to refrain from ‘masculine’
turns of phrase like collectively calling people “dudes”. However, with all
this in mind, I’m not entirely sure if I was intended to agree with either Erin
or Barbara. Erin talks about certain
notions about sexuality, but also aggressively Internet feminist attitudes;
Barbara brings up some points about religion, but also how homosexuality is a
mental illness. Given the opinions I’ve picked up from Zebub’s other films, and
the fact that he is playing Barbara in this film, I’m not sure if whose side
the film is on. It’s a Catch-22 regardless: If it agrees with Erin, then it’s
casually sexist; if it agrees with Barbara, then it’s casually homophobic. I’d
be fine if it was clear that we weren’t meant to agree entirely with any one
character, but since this is the film where the acting is so stiff that the
puppets are more realistic than the humans, I’m guessing that nuance isn’t
exactly in the cards for this kind of production. Zebub isn’t the kind of
director to be subtle, after all. Then there’s the what-I-think-are attempts at
parallel, with the puppets being the minorities of the film’s world. Honestly,
it feels about as tacked on as these last two sentences detailing that these
scenes exist.
All in all, this is definitely a shift away from the
uncomfortable-in-several-ways production of Loving A Vegetable, as this film is
at least trying for some kind of plot. However, through the still-painfully
slow scene progression, the shameless female nudity for no real reason and the
preaching to the Atheist choir dialogue, this still isn’t much to write home
about either. More than anything else, though, it’s just largely
incomprehensible and boring; as batshit as Dolla Morte was, that film had the
common decency to be engaging in its insanity. This is literally just porn
without the actual porn: Same hokey acting, same blatant nudity, same
bare-bones of a script, same scenes that go on for way longer than they need
to. The key difference here being that the only conceivable person who could get off to is Zack Snyder, and that’s only because of how much this film abuses its slow-mo shots.
Unless you have a thing for re-editing films into music videos and could
possibly have a use for a glorified showreel for materials, I’d just recommend
getting Dolla Morte instead.
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