Swiss Army
Man is among the most peculiar movies I've ever seen. To some extent,
it's Cast Away with a dead body substituting for Wilson the volleyball.
But if you've heard of it, it was probably as "the farting corpse
movie."
Hank
is marooned on a desert island and in the process of trying to kill
himself when a dead body washes ashore. Desperate for any companionship,
Hank soon imagines the corpse is able to talk. And that's just the tip
of the iceberg. His new friend, Manny, is the Swiss Army Man of the
title, useful for all sorts of tasks that might just help Hank survive
the ordeal.
There
are plenty of movies that have the same commitment to strangeness as
this one. Being John Malkovich is a classic; more recently, I've written
about The Lobster. Swiss Army Man is as deeply weird as those,
yet lacks the thoughtful message that makes the weirdness worthwhile.
The
filmmakers did put gags along the way, but ultimately even those aren't
enough. Without question, watching a man ride a flatulence-powered
corpse like a jet ski is one of the more insane visuals ever committed
to film. But the movie wants to have its cake and eat it too, making
tons of jokes about farting and masturbation while at the same time
pretending to be profound. Its ending doesn't come anywhere near
profound. It's among the longer 95 minutes you'll ever see, and the
journey isn't worth it.
The
two stars do give go-for-broke performances. Paul Dano is a suitably
mopey Hank, and Daniel Radcliffe wrings out a few extra laughs as Manny
apart from the sight gags. But they're still essentially fighting to
balloon an idea for a 10-minute short film to almost 10 times that
length. I just wasn't having it.
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