Swiss Army Man (2016)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on June 29, 2016 @ tonymacklin.net.

Swiss Army Man is a fart festival. Hallucinatory and outrageous.

It's like outtakes from a failed project by M. Night Shyamalan or Mel Brooks. It could be subtitled The Zero Sense or Blazing Jet Skis.

The plot is about a loner named Hank (Paul Dano) who is feeling helpless and suicidal. He is marooned on a beach and its abutting wilderness. Then he spots a body on the shoreline. It's a flatulent corpse Manny (Daniel Radcliffe). [This film may not be for people who know big words like "flatulence."]

Swiss Army Man becomes a buddy film with Manny tooting along to Hank's verbiage.

It sounds potentially quirky. Dano has made a career out of quirky. But it's not quirky, it's blatant.

We know we may be in trouble when the two writers/directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert are credited at the beginning as "Daniels." That's cutesy, with a lot more to come.

Behind the rumble of gas is banality. The screenplay by Daniels is full of such lines as Manny's, "I just had a thought over a thought." Or Hank's, "You just can't say everything that comes into your head. That's bad talking." At times the farts are better than the dialogue.

Much of the dialogue is chatter about "pooping" and "jerking off." So much of the latter, that it could be a 3-hatter.

The language and events provide a very conventional vision. "Be yourself." Ok. In service of its vision, the film promotes farting in public. It's good that it's not in Aromavision.

Also a prominent theme is Hank's inability to talk to a woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) with whom he rode the bus everyday. Maybe if he talked to her, there'd be no film. Obviously, there'd be less farting.

Along with the potential for Hank's stalking a woman, there's a homoerotic quality to the relationship between Hank and Manny. They pop their cork in the ocean. There's something for everyone in this film.

At the screening I attended, one reviewer was furiously angry after seeing Swiss Army Man. But the nonsense is not worth getting angry over. I checked my watch during the 95-minute screening more than I ever have at a movie. It should have been an indie short, instead of stopping time.

Dano and Radcliffe do what they can with their roles. But I admit I wanted to kick the farting soccer ball to kingdom come.