Sunday, February 19, 2012

BLUBBERELLA (2011) - finally, a Nazi movie that's tubs of fun! Sorry.



Folks, I like a good Holocaust joke as much as the next guy. Take, for example, the “comedian’s comedian” Andy Kindler. He used to do a bit about being a neurotic Jew. He's about to board a Greyhound bus that says “Baltimore” and thinks to himself “yeah…Baltimore Stuttgart!” Maybe that doesn’t kill on the page, but in the hands of a comedian that makes other comedians guffaw in the back of the room, it’s a winner and then some. Take, as another example, Blubberella, who spends an afternoon with Hitler (played by director Uwe Boll, of course) playing Risk and getting to know one another. In a moment of honesty, Blubberella says to Hitler “bro to bro, you should probably lay off the ethnic cleansing thing. People will start to think you’re an asshole.” Maybe not the product of a trenchant wit, but nevertheless, I’m all for knocking Hitler down yet another peg.



My point is, that when faced with unremitting human suffering, sometimes our only way of coping is to laugh. Thankfully, we have the likes of Uwe Boll and Lindsay Hollister in the title role (and co-writer too) to create a much needed humorous slant not only on the horrors of the holocaust, but also on the horrors of stupid vampire movies; namely, the entire Bloodrayne series. More specifically, Blubberella is a spoof of Bloodrayne III, and both were (at least partially) filmed concurrently. Filming a vampire movie and a spoof of that very movie at the same time in order to save money is exactly the kind of exploitation movie absurdity that makes me love Uwe Boll. If that wasn't enough, Uwe apparently filmed a serious treatise on the horrors of Auschwitz at the same time as well. I can't wait.

Anyway, the character of Blubberella is half-vampire, half-human, and “mostly dough”, and she joins an underground resistance group to fight Nazis and prevent a mad scientist plot to turn Hitler into an immortal (again, the same as in Bloodrayne III). She spends her down time in the “Jew-y” part of Germany, surfing “Hebrewhookup.org” on her Apple laptop. She begins her day with a hearty cotton candy breakfast, using her own carnival cotton candy machine that sits next to a walk-in freezer. She later pulls a baguette out of her leather trenchcoat to a Benny Hill sound effect. So she’s big on food, apparently. When the movie flashes back to her troubled childhood, it becomes a parody of Precious, with Blubberella cooking breakfast while her mom, a white guy in drag and blackface, hurls insults at her and hits her on the head with a frying pan. Folks, I expected the humor to be shameless, but frankly, I’m in awe.

Hollister is actually funny delivering the various one-liners during her scenes. However, too much of the movie is simply retakes of Bloodrayne III but with “funny” dialogue instead. Michael Pare and Clint Howard reprise their roles as the commandant and doctor, respectively, apparently attempting to parody themselves. However, it just goes to show that Michael Pare has no business doing comedy, and Clint Howard already IS comedy. Remember in my Bloodrayne III review when I said that Pare’s career had really hit the skids? Here he plays a parody of a ridiculous Nazi character that is twice thwarted by Blubberella, who first smothers him with her breasts so thoroughly he drowns in milk, and later sits on his face and rips a fart until he dies. Surely I can now confidently assert that Pare’s career cannot ebb any lower. Unless "Eddie and the Cruisers III" comes out, and Pare is playing bass for Nickelback and running a child pornography ring until he slips on a dildo and dies 15 minutes into the movie. You know, I would actually watch that movie.

Having said that, there are also a couple of nice action parody moments, like when Blubberella shoots one bullet at a group of Nazis and they all fall down, or the music score turning to a facsimile of Europe’s “The Final Countdown” when Blubberella is about to kick some ass. Like pretty much every Uwe Boll film, there are a few inexplicable touches, most notably when the resistance fighters are marching to their hideout, and marching along with them is a guy wearing a fish costume. He falls over and dies, presumably because he cannot breath, and everyone ignores him. Maybe we’re supposed to assume that a real giant fish wants to help out in the fight against the Nazis, but can’t cut it on land. Or, the resistance has a fish dude mascot that suddenly keeled over and died in the line of duty. Or, just maybe, Boll is parodying the idea that the group has a guy who’s a “fish out of water” by literally replacing him with a fish out of water. Either way, I appreciate these kind of nonsensical and absurd touches in a world of “logically sound” cookie-cutter comedies.



It would be easy to say that the film presents offensive stereotypes, whether the chubby girl who obsesses about food, or the dumb Nazi that is always up to no good. However, the movie is so divorced from reality that even the dumbest viewer (which I would assume would be a big chunk of the audience) could not possibly mistake these characters for real people. They’re not going to watch this movie and later bump into a German tourist at Abercrombie and Fitch and snap his collarbone with an elbow smash. People just aren’t THAT stupid. Perhaps I’m being optimistic. Either way, I tend to only be offended by that which harms others, and I can’t quite see how any harm could come out of Blubberella. Sure, there’s the extremely slim possibility that it could lead to permanent brain damage, but you could say that about almost any activity that’s actually fun.



2 comments:

  1. Is it bad when I say I've been looking forward to this for some time now?

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  2. @John
    In the states at least, a new Uwe Boll movie pops up on Netflix instant every 3 days or so, so I am never in the position of looking forward to his next project. It's just there all of a sudden.

    And yes, you are insane, but not as insane as I am. I paid to see House of the Dead in theaters TWICE.

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