Remember Kevin Smith? He’s the one who brought us the great cult classics such as Clerks and Mallrats. Silent Bob is considered one of our great modern philosophers while Jay was the stoner who everyone wanted to be friends with. Smith has a history of creating memorable characters with odd sounding plots, and they’ve always turned out to be fun midnight flicks. But lately, Smith has been going in a downward spiral. Starting out as a promising filmmaker, Smith’s pictures have been questionable as of late. Tusk had the potential to be great but it felt like Smith was trying too hard to make a B-movie. Unfortunately, Yoga Hosers is on a completely different level of bad. The second installation in his True North trilogy (Tusk was the first), Yoga Hosers centers around two apathetic teenage cashiers both named Colleen (Harley Quinn Smith and Lily Rose Depp) who have to defeat a demonic force in the form of sausages who threaten their party plans.
Smith seems to have some sort of fascination with Canadian stereotypes. Everything is supposed to be one Canuck joke after another, but is equivalent with an immature ten year old’s sense of humor. Did you know that Canadians love maple syrup and say “aboot” and “eh?”
While Tusk was Smith’s attempt at a Human Centipede film, Yoga Hosers is his Gremlins. The Nazi sausages are Smith’s attempt at creating edgy, iconic monsters that folks can keep talking about. However, the only thing that we will be talking about is the laughably horrible CGI that was used. The sausages looked incredibly undone and made Dogma’s CGI mess look like a masterpiece.
Johnny Depp reprises his Tusk character, Guy Lapointe—a detective who helps the Colleens take on these monsters. While usually known for his character acting, Depp tried too hard to channel his inner Peter Sellers and ended up looking out of place instead of fitting in. He’s nearly unrecognizable and helms a bad Quebec accent which makes his Mordecai rendition look like a serious attempt. While the first half of the film is wasted on trying to give the Colleens some character, he shows up halfway through the film to jumpstart the actual story. Sadly, not even his cracked out Hercule Poirot could save us from boredom.
Smith has repeatedly said that he made this film for his friends and after viewing it, I wholeheartedly believe him. The script is lazy and feels like a first draft with plots coming and going. We’re supposed to believe that the Colleens have their own band but only see them play a couple of times. Also, there is an unnecessary side plot with “cute” Satanic worshippers that felt like was supposed to be scrapped but Smith just forgot to get rid of the characters. At the Sundance festival, he mentions how he doesn’t care about what the audience thinks anymore. That kind of attitude is fine and is (sometimes) encouraged, but when you expect your fan base to like whatever you pull out your ass, then it’s just insulting. If you really need to see some talking sausages, then just go see Sausage Party.
Rating: 2/10
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