Gentlemen Broncos

Comments (0) By Scott Foundas Wednesday, Jan 13 2010

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Nothing if not consistent, Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre director Jared Hess once again presents adolescence as a depressive, outsider experience; makes light of the working class for being, well, poor; and nearly bests the Brothers Coen when it comes to drawing all of his characters from the shallow end of the gene pool. There are moments in Hess's third self-conscious cult film, Gentlemen Broncos, that exude a fetishistic, low-fi splendor, as Hess envisions the Buck Rogers-meets-Barbarella fantasy world of an introverted Utah teenager (Michael Angarano) writing a pulp science-fiction opus. But both Yeast Lords: The Bronco Years and the life of its author are subject to so much projectile vomit, animal flatulence, and innumerable plays on the word "anus" that even first-graders may find their tolerance tested. "You took my nads!" and "Eat the corn out of my crap" vie for their place in the catch-phrase canon, and an animatronic deer fires missiles out of its ass, though it's Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement who handily steals the show as a bestselling fanboy scribe sky-high on his own pomposity. Hess deserves credit, I suppose, for so effectively channeling his inner seven-year-old. Personally, I preferred spending two hours in the company of Spike Jonze's.
Tue., Jan. 19, 7:15 & 9:15 p.m.; Wed., Jan. 20, 2, 7:15 & 9:15 p.m., 2010