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Directed By
Jared Hess
Written By:
Jared Hess, Jerusha Hess
Cast:
Sam Rockwell, Michael Angarano, Jennifer Coolidge, Jemaine Clement, Mike White, Hector Jimenez, Josh Pais, Halley Feiffer, Steve Berg, Matt Jordon, Johnny Hoops, John Baker, Johnny Ahn, Ben Naccarato
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Gentlemen Broncos (2009)
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Movie Review by Jarrod
November 4th, 2009
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Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre illustrated writer-director Jared Hess's knack for creating quirky, and rather obnoxious characters; Hess seems like a one-trick pony, all of his films follow the same basic premise, and rely on this general character template. Napoleon Dynamite was an extraordinary success, and everyone seemed to love it but me, but it made a star out of Jon Heder, whose performance seemed more sincere, and was certainly more convincing than that of Michael Angarano in this flick, in which he plays a social misfit named Benjamin Purvis, who lives with his mother, Judith (Jennifer Coolidge), and spends his time writing over-the-top science fiction stories, featuring colorful protagonist Bronco (whose adventures are re-enacted with Sam Rockwell, in B-movie fashion).
Benjamin admires fantasy author Ronald Chevalier (Jemaine Clement), who wrote a string of bestsellers before fading into obscurity. Benjamin has a big imagination, but no life experience to draw from; attending a writers' camp, he meets a girl, Tabatha (Halley Feiffer), and her androgynous friend, Lonnie (Hector Jimenez). Lonnie's androgyny is a running gag; we are meant to keep guessing as to his (or her) gender, and getting mixed messages from his confusing, and often contradictory behavior. Tabatha encourages Benjamin to submit his manuscript, to a contest where one of the judges just happens to be Chevalier, who likes Ben's story so much he actually plagiarizes it, and passes it off as his next novel. Ben can recognize the plagiarism easily, since all Chevalier does is change a few names, mainly making Bronco into Brutus.
This cues more campy scenes with Rockwell. Hess relies a bit too much on these narrative digressions, which are initially amusing, but grow tiresome, as Hess repeatedly comes back to them, only to expand the running time, and pad an empty and shallow plot. Clement, from the acclaimed comedy series Flight of the Conchords is more compelling, and entertaining, than Angarano; Angarano, unlike Heder, is too good-looking for us to accept him as a morose, mal-adjusted, nerdy, recluse. And Angarano does not appear to follow Hess's comedic cues that closely.
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