Film Reviews

Strange Wilderness

• Rating:
• Director: Fred Wolf
• Starring: Jonah Hill
• Details: US / 87mins (16).

"The shark - the asshole of the sea," goes Peter Gaulke's (Zahn) crap voiceover for Strange Wilderness, a wildlife programme that's in danger of being cancelled for, well, crap voiceovers. The son of a famous wildlife presenter, stoner Peter has fallen on hard times, but gets a reprieve when he is handed pictures of Bigfoot, rumoured to be roaming about in the jungles of South America. Taking off with his stoner crew (including Long and Hill), Peter and co. get into all sorts of bother trying to shoot what could be the last episode of the legendary show. More and more comedies are taking a different approach - write a loose script and hope that the laughs come when the camera rolls (re: Drillbit Taylor). The problem with this is that the freewheeling, ad-lib approach fails more times than it works. However, for every bad line or gag that falls flat, Strange Wilderness just keeps coming, secure in the knowledge that they have something in their canon that will make you spit out your popcorn. For example: one character is called Dick, so cue endless one-liners about his name. Not funny. "Fewer people have been killed by bears than in WWI and WWII combined. Fact." Funny. Strange Wilderness is an immature comedy that will appeal to the Cheech And Chong, Harold And Kumar and Wild Boyz fans out there.

Review by Gavin Burke