Outbreak is SO...2000s? - Saving Silverman

At least Amanda Peet gives us some nice cleavage in this flick. There's not much else to look at.

Yeah this movie came out in 2001. So what? I want to write something about it and I’m lumping it in with this 90s movie series? Why? Because this movie reeks like the refuse of the 90s! This is a perfect example of the hybrid Rom-Com/Boner comedies I talked about in my review for You’ve Got Mail. It stars Jason Biggs riding high off his American Pie fame and two bit players in the 90s, Jack Black and Steve Zahn, who were in the last two movies I reviewed You’ve Got Mail and The Cable Guy, which is what impelled me to hit play on this movie on Netflix. Well, that and I had fond memories of this movie from when I was a teenager. I was clearly smoking weed for the first time when I first saw this to have those fond memories.

How embarrassing!

For the first 20 minutes, I was mostly enjoying it. The film does a good job of establishing the three main characters, their personalities, their relationship, their hang-ups, and how pathetic they are as twenty-somethings who love Neil Diamond so much the three rejects have a tribute band. It’s pretty simple stuff, but it works, especially the childhood scene where Bigg’s character is tricked by a girl into getting tripped, and that girl then beats up the three leads as boys. Then Amanda Peet enters the fray as a super intelligent, domineering woman who quickly subjects Jason Biggs beneath her boot; Biggs is basically giant cuck in this movie. There is a pretty decent dynamic all around. There was promise.

I couldn't agree more.

Then oh my dear Gob sweet JESUS Christ on a rocket-powered pogo stick the rest of this movie played! Zahn and Black who were just loveable losers in the beginning turn out be actual retards, and I don’t mean that to be offensive to the mentally handicapped because the mentally handicapped are smarter than these two – these characters themselves are offensive to the mentally handicapped. They’re loud, grating, utterly moronic and inept and helpless arm-flailing imbeciles. They consistently get their ass kicked. All their plans fail. They live in literal filth. Every parent literally prays their kids will get cancer and die slowly rather than become either of these two…it’s less painful to everyone that way. And that’s where this movie falls apart.

Oh, you're gonna love these guys, babe. I promise. It's like like hanging out with Jar Jar Binks and Officer Doofy at the same time!

Yes Amanda Peet is a controlling, manipulative bitch. But Zahn and Black are so utterly embarrassing that it’s impossible for me to blame Peet for hating them and never wanting Biggs to see them again…because they’re sheer horrors of human beings that any woman would run from. They really are holding Biggs back. Biggs needs to be free. Free Biggs! Free Biggs! Free Biggs! I take back what I said about Biggs being a cuck in this movie. He’s not a cuck. He simply rightfully decided that a lifetime of abuse, subjugation, and being cucked by Amanda Peet, where he gets the pleasure of eating her out nightly before before she callously gives him hand cream to jerk off – i.e. living a life of abject humiliation and sexual deprivation as a sissy man slave to a beautiful woman – is clearly the better option over hanging out with Black and Zahn for another day.

I love this man.

Now, there is one lone bright spot in this film: the late, great R. Lee Ermey. Almost everything he says is funny, not because the words are funny so much as anything he says because of how he says it is automatically funny. I would rather watch an entire movie about this aggressive, angry, closeted homosexual high school football coach who is jail for accidentally impaling a referee with a down counter at a football game. Watching him shit on the lawn and dole out advice like “Kill her” (Peet) as if deciding between baked or fries as his side is just plain fun. And there is a funny scene where Peet is escaping (oh yeah, the plot is Zahn and Black somehow manage to kidnap her despite their literal every action being a product of pure failure) and Ermey goes to stop her, only for her to whoop his ass outright.

Also credit to Peet who does a pretty good job, all things considered. She’s written as such an over the top evil, temptress bitch that she is a full-blown caricature. In a better film with better material that could make her seem like a human being that might actually exist, she’d be downright enjoyable.

The "dude, it's one nacho line" being the lone survivable thing from this movie is fine with me. I still say it whenever food sticks together.

Actually, I don’t want to be super hard on this film entirely. Yes, it is

horrifically bad. But there are a few sight gags that work, mostly in flashback scenes, like Peet’s ex-husband dying in a street fight in Thailand and the Trapeze accident and some childhood stuff, which are somewhat humourous. And I find the image of a bunch of old nuns lifting at the gym to be a funny image at the service of a bad movie. Actually, I'd rather watch a film about bad bitch nuns starting a fight club. They can call it Wale Mary.

Actual scene from Wale Mary

What ultimately sinks this movie is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be. Is it a romantic comedy? A boner comedy? A stupid comedy? A gross out comedy? A satire? It’s all over the place. What makes this movie so disappointing is that there are talented actors in this movie, and Jason Biggs, and the premise is a solid jumping off point: a trio of loser friends dealing with one of them getting into a serious relationship for the first time. You can tell a funny and endearing story about that with this same cast, except for Jason Biggs, with a good writer who would immediately delete the kidnapping plot, which is just bad writing - clearly they thought, “LOL What a funny premise! That’ll be funny for 60 minutes!” and it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all. In fact, it turns out that whom we’re meant to see as the protagonists are actually violent, petty, emotionally crippled and intelligence derelict maniacs who should be indefinitely incarcerated simply for the fact that society itself is in danger with them walking around as free men.

FUCK YOU, JASON BIGGS

This movie made me so sad that I didn’t watch another movie for 4 days. During the Shut-In, that’s an eternity.