Just mark this one down in the WTF column. So this is about a good-natured man who finds himself down on his luck (Michael Shannon). When he gets blitzed one night and dons a costume of fur, he gets mistaken for Bigfoot. This causes quite the stir in the town, and he is faced with a predicament: does he keep up with the gig and help the town gain fame and tourism, or does he come clean? This is arguably the most talented cast I have ever seen in a movie that is direct-to-video. In addition to the hugely talented Michael Shannon, this has Christina Hendricks, Ian McShane, Judy Greer, Ron Perlman and Thomas Lennon. If that isn’t a star-studded cast that grabs your attention, I don’t know what will.
If you didn’t know any better, you might think that this is an Oscar contender on paper.
Now as you can probably gather from the plot description, this has nothing to do with the alternate timeline town in It’s a Wonderful Life, which I was actually kind of hoping for; enough time has passed since that classic, and if you have a good idea, then why not? This is a movie that I really cannot explain its existence. It’s almost like it is a Funny or Die practical joke that went too far, just because this isn’t the group of actors that would do this kind of movie from an integrity standpoint. I suppose that they all might have happened to want to make a Christmas movie for their children and everyone’s schedule happened to sync up, and that is the only thing that allows for me to rationalize this in my brain. Even if you can get past this movie simply existing, there are plot points that are hard to get past, like Christina Hendricks being married to Michael Shannon, for example. Now I’ve got nothing but love for the guy, but you have to admit that he looks like a golem, so you’ve already breached the realm of reality with a marriage to someone that is as high up on a pedestal as Christina Hendricks. Also, and I am not making this up, this movie has an important story element revolving around furries, which is extremely out of place in something that feels like could be a family friendly comedy otherwise.
… Yeah, this movie left me stunned more often than not.
The fact that this was ever made in the first place is just bizarre, and there is a part of me that wants to see a Disaster Artist behind-the-scenes movie of how this came to be. Despite the talented cast, this ends up failing way more often than not, as it appears that nobody went off script for this. Thomas Lennon is a better actor than this part is, and he ends up being one of the most annoying things about this movie. Because it is actors with this much clout doing something so fluffy, it ends up playing like a fever dream. I couldn’t tell you what they were thinking, you’re just going to have to ask the actors yourself.
Pottersville (2017) **
– Critic for Hire
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