SMOSH: The Movie

SMOSH, for those of you without children, is the YouTube channel of Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla.  The duo specializes in adolescent humor, cheap gags, and song parodies.  They’re hammy, they’re crude, and my older boys love them.  My boys aren’t alone: Ian and Anthony have parleyed SMOSH from a couple of YouTube videos into a multimillion dollar empire with a Spanish language affiliate, record deal, and their own movie.  Regardless, this was a movie I decidedly did not want to see.  However, my older kids begged me and I do like to style myself a marginally good father, so I sat down with one either side and locked myself in for a tedious 84 minutes.

I am surprised and delighted to report that, while juvenile, crude, and hammy, SMOSH: The Movie is actually funny.  The film establishes parental goodwill in the very first frame, when it announces itself as an Alex Winter (Bill of Bill &Ted’s Excellent Adventure) film.  [I like Alex Winter.  I want good things for him.  I’m happy he landed the gig.]  It then proceeds into the laziest story imaginable, when our YouTube stars find themselves actually stuck inside YouTube, flitting from video to video on their quest to find and erase the one clip that so humiliated (Ian?  Anthony?  I get them mixed up.) that he can never find true love.

Just when I started thinking about all the chores I could have been doing, however, the gags started rolling in.  And they kept rolling in, one after another.  This is the kind of movie that, while aggressively stupid, is so intent on making you laugh that it just keeps throwing stuff at you until something sticks and you catch yourself chuckling.  Then, once it has broken down your resistance, it throws more silly gags at you until, despite yourself, you find yourself laughing out loud, then laughing again.

Look, don’t get me wrong: this movie still feels like something recorded for nothing in somebody’s living room.  Ian and Anthony are bad actors, they’re surrounded by bad actors (with the notable exception of a beloved supported player from Bill and Ted, whom it’s a pleasure to see onscreen), and the entire affair comes across as B-level stuff.  However, Ian and Anthony are bad actors who are willing to do just about anything for a laugh. 

And y’know what?  That’s good enough for me.  I can’t believe I’m writing this, but I’ll actually queue up Smosh 2.  And I’ll do it with a smile.

Under the Skin

Under the Skin is a great example of why we need more 60-minute featurettes.  This is a mesmerizing film, featuring a brilliant performance from Scarlett Johansson, that’s about 48 minutes too long.

Johansson plays The Monster, albeit a monster who happens to look like Scarlett Johansson in a hooker costume.  She spends the first act of the film (mostly) driving around Glasgow in a windowless van, hunting for single young men.  When she spots a mark, she pulls over and asks for directions.  Once she has the young man talking, she tries to talk him into the van.  Pro tip:  don’t ever let a stranger lure you into a windowless van, even if that stranger looks like Scarlett Johansson in a hooker costume.

Fun fact: many of the film’s early encounters actually happened.  Johansson spent several days and nights driving around Glasgow in a van wired with microphones and hidden cameras, and she really did stop strangers and try to talk them into the vehicle.  Those who declined were chased after by people with waivers.  Those who accepted met the crew hiding in the back of the van and – you guessed it – signed waivers.

Not so fun fact: Under the Skin’s first act is an hour long, though it only takes the audience about twenty minutes to discern The Monster’s pattern and understand that she is growing and changing.  After that, it’s 40 tedious minutes of more of the same, punctuated by the occasional scene of heartbreak and horror.

Those second two acts move along nicely and keep us engaged, and in so doing they give us an inkling of how wonderful this film may have been as a 60-minute featurette.  Under the Skin creates a wonderful, suspenseful, and uneasy (yet meditative) mood.  It does great things with special effects on a very low budget.  It draws a career-highlight performance from its star, who is such a good actress that she can stand, nude, in front of a mirror and keep this male viewer's eyes locked on her face.

This film has so much going for it, I can only imagine how much better it may have been with a more ruthless edit.  As it stands, Under the Skin is good.  At 60 minutes, it could have been great.