Review by Brian Tallerico

Hide the women and children. Uwe Boll has made a comedy. Actually, hide the men and old folks too. The man who has made several unintentional comedies over the last few years actually goes for laughs in Postal and, to no one’s surprise, comes up incredibly short. Postal is the kind of comedy that feels like it wasn’t even funny to the people who made it. The desperation to do something “shocking” comes through in every frame, but what Boll forgets is that showing a plane hitting the World Trade Center or children getting shot is only “shockingly funny” if there’s a punchline associated with it. Boll mistakes "shock for shock’s sake" for humor, as if seeing a formerly respectable actor like Dave Foley take a dump or watching monkeys rape Verne Troyer would be funny purely in a “I can’t believe he did that” fashion. Maybe in 1950. But in the era of South Park and Borat, a writer actually has to include something other than f-bombs, nudity, and midget rape to get a laugh. Even Beavis and Butthead wouldn’t laugh. (But they would say “Shame on you, Dave Foley. Shame on you.”)

Based on the classic video game by Running with Scissors, Postal opens with the already controversial sequence in which two of the 9/11 hijackers rethink their attack on the World Trade Center. The pilots are just about to reroute to the Bahamas when the passengers break in and fly into the buildings. Laughing yet? Maybe it’s funny in German (but probably not.) The film’s main plot kicks in seven years later with the introduction of “Postal Dude” (Zack Ward), a poor guy who lives in Paradise, Arizona, and has to deal with a world gone mad. His morbidly obese wife is cheating on him, he can’t get a job, and he gets mugged outside the unemployment office. After killing the mugger, our hero ends up at his Uncle Dave’s (Dave Foley) religious commune. It turns out that Dave’s little cult owes millions in back taxes so the leader plans a daring crime with his nephew, the hijacking of a shipment of Krotchy Dolls, stuffed toys that look like, well, you can guess. In a stroke of bad luck and worse writing, Dave and his nephew happen to have the same plan as Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban, who want to steal the Krotchy Dolls to fill them with avian flu. It all hits the fan at a Nazi-themed amusement park where both Verne Troyer, playing himself, and Uwe Boll, playing the park owner, get involved in the “fun.” No, Boll the writer/director can’t even get a laugh from Boll the actor and, when it crosses your mind that reality TV staple Troyer is too good for this material, you know the script has some problems. Even Beavis and Butthead would turn this script down.

I’ll admit that the ridiculous, over-the-top nature of Postal nearly works for a little while just for curiosity’s sake. You won’t see anything else like it this year. But shocking originality can’t carry a viewer through a film that runs over 100 minutes and has barely a genuine laugh. A world where people get shot at the Welfare Office and cops kill people for taking too long at the intersection might have worked with the right script and director. And Boll actually displays more basic where-to-put-the-camera talent than he usually does (certainly more than the even-worse In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale…it’s been quite a year). What doesn’t change is the fact that Boll has no sense of humor. Is it funny or nauseating when a guy throws flour on a fat chick to find the “wet spot” before sex? Even Beavis and Butthead would watch something else.

Rating: HALF BONE

Release Date: May 23rd, 2008

Rating: R

Starring: Zack Ward, Dave Foley, Chris Coppola, J.K. Simmons, Verne Troyer, Chris Spencer, Jackie Tohn, Ralf Moeller, Larry Thomas, and Michael Pare

Director: Uwe Boll

Writers: Uwe Boll & Bryan C. Knight