Mongo Nation

Epic clash of the weirdo-comedy lovers

Johnny Firecloud Vs. Jeremy Azevedo

I recently caught a screening of the new Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre) film Gentlemen Broncos, and found that I had vastly different feelings about the movie than another of our writers, one mister Jeremy Azevedo. Things got a bit heated in our point-by-point exchange, but the character assassinations and personal attacks shouldn’t be taken as anything more than hard-fought opinion flag-planting, dear reader. We do it for you. It’s all for you.

JOHNNY: I didn’t enjoy the film nearly as much as I’d hoped to. Gentlemen Broncos isn’t terrible, or even bad really but it seems to aim specifically for the 8 year-old boy demographic. The comedy of it isn’t lost on me - the Yeast Lords sci-fi fantasy world is hilarious, especially when co-opted and completely gayed out by Dr. Ronald Chevalier.

But the intentional awkwardness that made Napoleon Dynamite great is far too heavy-handed here, and while the characters are hilarious, the whole thing just seems too deliberate. The comedy is way overplayed, and the best parts of the film were in the trailer (except the snake shitting on that dude - that was pure gold). The book cover art is totally awesome and the use of Ray Lynch’s music was brilliant, but I felt like I had a brain-STD after the movie.

JEREMY: Deliberate? Overplayed? This, coming from a guy that’s a card-carrying Tim Burton fan. So T.B. can make 300 variations of the same goddamn movie, but Jared Hess isn’t allowed to employ a similar style more than once?

Personally, I find his style unique and refreshing when compared to nearly everything else out there. How many Star Wars/blowjob gags can we tolerate from Kevin Smith? How many times is Judd Apatow going to have some fat guy tell us the same dick joke? Gentlemen Broncos was consistently funny, while at the same time giving us a glimpse into a world that very few, if any, moviegoers have ever looked in on. I can’t believe that Hess is more or less the first person to successfully turn a camera on the one weird kid that everybody remembers from school, but never actually met, and tell his or her story.

At the very least, you have to admit that 100% of the fantasy sequences were incredibly awesome, and that Dr. Ronald Cheveliar was an instant classic character. Did you notice that he was always wearing a Bluetooth earpiece, but that he always spoke to people on a regular phone? Broncos was filled with little touches like that which warrant a re-watching. Like Napoleon Dynamite, it will require repeated viewings to fully appreciate the depth of humor beneath the dryness. Maybe you just need to watch it again.

JOHNNY: Card-carrying Tim Burton fan? You cheap fucking swine - my initial response to your “do you like Tim Burton?” bait question was “not really, no” - before admitting that some of his work is good. But it’s too limited in vision, he rides Johnny Depp’s rod a little too hard for real appreciation and those freaky Indian-midget oompa-loomps were horrible. I won’t deny that.

That said, Gentlemen Broncos would definitely be a unique and refreshing tale, if Napoleon Dynamite hadn’t existed before it. I won’t argue that Kevin Smith is more overrated than Judd Apatow, whose fetish for fat underdog protags is only worsened by the fact that he casts his shrill, haggard wife in every goddamn thing he does.

Yes. The fantasy sequences were fantastic. Once I regressed to my 8 year-old self I laughed like hell, and I’m sure I’ll appreciate it more on repeated viewings, but it’s gonna take some fantastic fucking weed. Chevalier’s bluetooth was hysterical, however, as was Sam Rockwell’s gay lisp. But dear Christ, that Pedro wannabe with the big grin was terrifying and horrible. I was also bothered by the fact that he never got his teeth kicked in for writing a check post-dated for the following year, but I digress.

JEREMY: Whatever. You probably have a “Jack Skellington” tattoo on your bicep. You don’t gotta lie to kick it, dude.

Not Johnny’s arm. Or so he says.

And I understand your constantly comparing Gentlemen Broncos to Napoleon Dynamite. They’re both great movies. But they’re not at all alike. Napoleon Dynamite is about a kid with Aspergers that finds love and friendship in the face of societal adversity. Gentleman Broncos is about a timid and emasculated young sci-fi novelist without a father figure in his life, battling his own mentor and becoming a man in the process. It’s also about flying deer with fucking machine guns for eyes. To say that they’re exactly alike is like saying Die Hard and Commando are exactly alike because they are both action movies.

I don’t fully understand what isn’t to like about this movie. The characters are weird and horrible looking, but so are most people in real life. Gentlemen Broncos shows us ourselves in a mirror and some of us (you) are repelled by it. Others (me) are able to accept this conceit as an admittedly  persistent (though motivated) stylistic decision on the part of the filmmaker and enjoy the film for what it is: An entirely original and witty coming of age story that also happens to be a bad-ass space epic. I would watch an entire “Yeast Lords” movie if they made one. Without the slightest bit of hesitation. Especially if it was narrated by Dr. Ronald Chevalier.

JOHNNY: I’m proud of you for analyzing the plot variances, but I made no reference to storyline similarities. It’s not the plots that are similar, but the quirky societal-outcast spin is retread, and the Dynamite universe is very strongly represented here. Napoleon could’ve been an unnoticed extra in the film, easily. And I’m not sold on the notion that GB is a statement about ourselves, mirror or no. It’s a world that anyone who grew up in middle America can, sadly, associate with, but certainly an unflattering portrayal of the less-appealing dynamics of a cultureless culture. It’s geared to make an 8 year-old take a different look at the weirdness around him, but don’t try to go calling this film a mirror-gazing assessment of our modern selves. That’s just ludicrous psuedo-intellectual hot air, ol’ chap.

The kitschy anti-beauty of it all, particularly the desperately unlikable (and thus lovable) characters, gets tiresome (specifically that weepy mom and the toothy filmmaker’s opportunistic assistant), but all this goddamn talking about the film makes me want to see it again - if only to see those awesome book covers one more time.

But for the record, Skellington hater, Arnold could still kick the shit out of Bruce Willis, heaving post-muscular man-tits and all.