Strange Wilderness

Rating R Formats DVD Genre comedy Starring Steve Zahn, Allen Covert, Jonah Hill, Kevin Heffernan Directed by Fred Wolf Publisher Paramount Pictures

Strange Wilderness is one of those movies that have such a terrible concept that it should be funny just on general principle. Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison production company has a knack for churning out films that are all around awful but basically force you to laugh at their stupidity. That’s what I was shooting for when I watched Strange Wilderness. Did it meet my expectations? Not even close.

The story is about television wildlife program host Peter Gaulke (Steve Zahn) who is failing to keep the show afloat after his father, the previous host, passes away. Peter and his team of drug-induced buddies fill the show with nature footage voiced-over with dumb and made up facts that are either thought up on the spot, or are literally pre-written in a drunken stupor on a cocktail napkin the night before. Needless to say, the show is failing tremendously and will be cancelled unless the team can pull off a miracle to boost the ratings.

The plot, or what is supposed to be perceived as a plot, thickens when Peter is given the opportunity to save his tainted wildlife show by tracking down Bigfoot. The tension rises as the million dollar questions are asked: Will they find Bigfoot in enough time to save the show? Are they even capable of pulling off such a serious task without destroying the show and themselves? Will the audience even care halfway through the film? I think the last question is the one that will be pondered the most by the viewers.

The film, despite the successful comedic cast that includes Jonah Hill (Superbad, Knocked Up), Allen Covert (Grandma’s Boy), and Kevin Heffernan (Super Troopers), fails to produce even accidental laughs, with the exception of one particular scene involving a drugged-out Justin Long with strategically placed tattoos on his eyelids so that if he’s sleeping, people will think he’s awake. The rest of the film’s attempts at laughter are just so ridiculous and effortless that it almost made me feel embarrassed for the cast whom I would like to think know a good comedic script from an abomination like Strange Wilderness.

While watching the film, I started to wonder if these guys were serious. Who could even toy with the notion that this atrocity would be worthy of viewing? I felt as though the script, itself, was written on a cocktail napkin during a long night of heavy intoxication. Maybe that’s how they came up with the idea of the voice-overs being written in the same manner. It doesn’t seem very far-fetched given the caliber of intelligence that was put into the making of the movie.

By the film’s end, it became very clear to me that the cast and crew undoubtedly had a blast creating this movie and probably laughed uncontrollably through the whole wild ride. Unfortunately, they fail to let the rest of us in on what seems to be one big inside joke between close friends that no one outside the group will ever understand or find humorous.