| |
Butt Boy
|
|
| Year: |
2019
|
|
Director: |
Tyler Cornack
|
| Stars: |
Tyler Rice, Tyler Cornack, Shelby Dash, Brad Potts, Austin Lewis, Robert Ackerman Moss, Tyler Dryden, Kai Henderson, Wilky Lau, Colleen Elizabeth Miller, Nino Hara, Jeremiah Jahi, Kristina Clifford, Anna Wholey, Michael Lugenbeuhl, Angela Jones
|
| Genre: |
Comedy, Science Fiction, Weirdo |
| Rating: |
  7 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
Chip Gutchell (Tyler Cornack) has what appears to be a stable existence at home and at work, where he is an office drone for a roofing company, taking care of the IT. He is married to Anne (Shelby Dash) and they have a new baby, but she is more interested in that than Chip, and even the pet dog doesn't show him much affection. He begins to realise he is taking no pleasure out of life whatsoever, and is in need of something to fill the void in his soul, but with the suburbs providing no way out, what can he possibly find? It is then that it happens: his first prostate examination, completely routine but he finds it transformative, the closest to pleasure he has been in years. How can he recreate the sensation? How about pushing objects into his anus?
If that premise makes you laugh, then perhaps you're the admittedly niche target audience for Butt Boy, a near-uncategorisable effort that might have been a comedy, might have been a horror, might have even been a serious drama, yet despite progressing at a steady pace and a singularity of purpose, never settled into anything that was recognisable as an obvious slot to fill. If you'll pardon the phrase. There was an element of police procedural as well, thanks to top-billed Tyler Rice as Russel B. Fox, the detective on the case of missing persons that seem to be connected to Chip; actually, there's no "seems" about it, as he has graduated from objects to animals to finally entire people, though the actual mechanism of this talent is not delved into, you have to accept it.
It's redundant to call this odd, especially when it went about its ludicrous storyline with utmost gravitas, which once you noticed what it was really concerned with was serious addiction. Apparently reasoning you can get addicted to anything, from alcohol to inserting objects arsewards, Butt Boy had a hidden agenda to get the audience to consider the issues around alcoholism, drug abuse, masturbation addiction, food fixations and more, all through the medium of something utterly preposterous. Admittedly it was a stretch for many to find Chip's focus anything they could sympathise with, which was presumably why his nemesis is Fox who he meets at his Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and becomes his mentor to get him to kick the habit. Except Chip isn't there because of the booze, this is simply a substitute because he could not admit his actual addiction.
If you were not finding that theme stimulating, there were laughs, but largely of the "Is this supposed to be funny? Should I be laughing?" variety. It was played alternately like some deadly serious cop drama that television had staked its claim over - Fox is the cliched cop with the issues and a major regret in his background - and a deadpan, obsessively weirdo sensibility that was born of sketch comedy, since this could have been condensed into a skit, or a running gag, but the team behind it had gotten carried away with their ambitions. Nevertheless, it remained a low budget affair, but its ideas were so bizarre that they carried it over the lack of lavishness, lavishness would have gone against its off-kilter, pedestrian nature anyway. When the setpieces arrive, with Chip sucking people into his bottom in a hurricane fury, and the destination of those he consumes revealed, it only really had one place to go, and that was bodily fluids a-go-go, the anal orgasm our villain has been seeking, even though it will prove his undoing. You hesitate to call it uplifting, but it was amusing. Weirdly amusing. Music by Cornack and Ryan Koch, who co-wrote the screenplay.
|
| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
|
| |
|
|
