'Gentlemen Broncos' review

Jemaine Clement (Credit: Seth Smoot/Fox Searchlight)

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'Napoleon Dynamite': Where are they now?

Catch up with the cast doing whatever they feel like doing

17-year-old aspiring sci-fi writer Benjamin Purvis (Michael Angarano) attends a Utah writers’ camp in the hopes of meeting his favorite author, Dr. Ronald Chevalier (Jemaine Clement). The struggling Chevalier winds up secretly stealing Ben’s latest story, “Yeast Lords: The Bronco Years,” and rewriting and releasing it as his own work. (Sam Rockwell plays the hero in cheesy B-movie-esque reenactments from both Ben’s imaginatively juvenile vision and Chevalier’s pretentiously trite reimagining.) At the same time, “Bronco” becomes the basis for a project that falls somewhere between a home movie and an independent film, overseen by grotesque teen director Lonnie (Hector Jimenez) and Ben’s pseudo-love interest Tabatha (Halley Feiffer).

The buzz: Jared Hess, director of the low-budget breakout hit “Napoleon Dynamite,” and his wife/co-writer Jerusha Hess, return to the indie film world after collaborating with a major studio on Jack Black’s “Nacho Libre.” They’ve got a good cast—including Emmy-nominated “Flight of the Conchords” star Clement, the brilliantly versatile Rockwell and reliable scene-stealer Jennifer Coolidge (as Ben’s clueless fashion designer mom)—but have the filmmakers matured beyond their fondness for lowbrow laughs?

The verdict: Even in “Napoleon Dynamite” I didn’t buy Hess’ oddballs as endearingly eccentric or quirky, merely condescending and contemptuous caricatures from a filmmaker in over his head. His snarky staging of underdog-makes-good clichés had all the comedic bite of a playground bully picking on the tiniest kid in school. Initially, “Broncos” promises more of the same—especially in the nasty, “laugh at the freaks!” portrayals of Lonnie, Tabatha and Ben’s mom. Then Clement appears as the perfect picture of a pompous literary tool: all big hair, bigger ego and hilariously dramatic accent. He makes Chevalier a fully formed, genuinely comic creation and a seemingly perfect foil for Angarano’s endearing portrayal of a normal-on-the-outside nuts-on-the-inside teen. What an interesting movie that might have been. Instead, the characters go off on separate but equally uninspired tracks, leaving us with 90 minutes of jokes centered around poop, testicles and vomit. Not to mention a hideous misuse of Rockwell's enviable talents. (He even has to play a few scenes with an effeminate lisp, because, you know, people who talk like that are so...funny!) The insulting “feel good” ending is supposed to prove how much the filmmakers love these characters they’ve spent the whole movie mocking. Don’t buy it. Everything you need to know about the depressing, unsavory “Gentlemen Broncos” can be summarized by a single shot: a close-up on a steaming pile of dog crap.

Did you know? The Hesses claim that when they finish writing a scene they make out. That’s one advantage to working with your spouse.

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