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.

Wet Hot American Summer

WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER, a summer camp comedy, is a bad, bad movie. It's stupid. It's poorly acted. It's badly shot. It makes MEATBALLS look like THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. And this is coming from a guy who worked four summers at a camp on Catalina Island, a guy who still nurtures fond memories of the time the Newport Beach High School Girl's Swim Team camped out at the next bay over.

And yet, ghastly as this film undoubtedly is, I can't quite bring myself to outright hate it. This is where the world of context comes into play. This film, released in 2001, was cowritten by and features Michael Showalter, who went on to give us THE BAXTER. Its stars include Michael Ian Black, who was also in THE BAXTER; Paul Rudd, who killed in THE BAXTER, THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN, and KNOCKED UP; Christopher Meloni, who blew everyone away with his roles in "Oz" and "Law and Order: SVU"; and (most importantly) Elizabeth Banks, who has helped to give us SPIDER-MAN, SEABISCUIT, THE BAXTER, THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN, the incomparable SLITHER, and INVINCIBLE, plus a great turn in "Scrubs." And she kisses a girl. Janeane Garofalo and David Hyde Pierce play the grownups, and they get a pass on general principle. Had I seen this movie in 2001, I'm sure I would have hated it outright. Seeing it in 2007, I see a bunch of talented people figuring out how a third act transition works, how to hit a mark, how to act onscreen. I see people who are still unsure of themselves and going for easy, parodic schtick, and I know they'll mature and go on deliver clever, character-based work.

Still, I can't recommend WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER. Not even for Paul Rudd completists or Elizabeth Banks fetishists. The movie made me laugh all of once, and that was more a dismayed bark than actual amusement. Just move right along to THE BAXTER, where the training wheels come off. You'll be glad you did.