Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.5

Fubar: Balls to the Wall Blu-ray Movie Review

Nothing like testicular cancer for a few good laughs, eh?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 7, 2011

If any of you are looking for a quick and easy drinking game to facilitate getting completely hammered, FUBAR: Balls to the Wall offers one incredible opportunity. Simply take a chug (or indeed even a sip) every time someone drops the “F-bomb”, and chances are within the film’s first few minutes you’ll be very, very sloppily drunk. Scabrous, irreverent and dripping with political incorrectness, FUBAR: Balls to the Wall is a follow-up to the 2002 Canadian “cult hit” FUBAR. The 2002 film actually didn’t break out into anything approaching mainstream acceptance, but it slowly but surely found its own headbanging audience over the course of several years and developed a rather surprisingly rabid fan base. The first FUBAR dealt with two Alberta headbangers, Terry (Dave Lawrence) and Dean (Paul Spence), as they attempted to deal with Dean’s onslaught of testicular cancer, while at the same time smashing and dashing their way through a number of drunken and drug fueled escapades that saw them wreaking a good deal of havoc wherever they went. Lawrence and Spence are longtime buddies who worked together in an improv group which saw the seed (no pun intended) idea for FUBAR sprout and then grow into the first film. Like the initial FUBAR outing, FUBAR: Balls to the Wall had no real script, just a 30 page outline that gave the cast the bare minimum they needed to improvise one of the weirdest “road” and/or “buddy” films in recent memory. Does it work? The answer will depend on your personal tolerance for expletives, bodily function jokes and mindless behavior. Evidently there’s a large and appreciative audience for these elements out there, and there is already talk of a third FUBAR in the offing.

Balls to the Wall follows the further exploits of Terry and Dean, beginning with the fifth anniversary of Dean being cancer free. That celebration turns into a drug fueled catastrophe when the two, who have been evicted from their little home, decide, at the urging of best bud Tron (Andrew Sparacino) to destroy the place, while simultaneously Dean, out of his mind high on LSD, sets fire to his bedroom. This opening scene is completely over the top, frequently indecipherable and perfectly captures the tone that viewers are going to experience for the next hour and a half. Tron reveals he can get the duo high paying jobs at Alberta’s Fort McMurray, a sort of combination of rural outpost and oil pipeline facility.

Perhaps unexpectedly, Terry fits right into the workaday world and is soon hauling in huge amounts of cash, which he just as quickly throws away at the local strip club, where he soon becomes enamored of waitress Trish (Terry Hazelton). Trish is not exactly a woman of high moral standing, and it is soon revealed that she’s bedded virtually every member of the pipeline laying crew. (Evidently pipeline is not the only thing they’ve been laying). Dean finds himself the third wheel of this unlikely new romantic pairing, and even more troubling, he can’t really adapt to the stress of actually holding a job, so he comes up with the “brilliant” plan of injuring himself so that he can collect Workers Compensation.

FUBAR: Balls to the Wall manages to eke out some fitful laughs and a really surprising amount of tenderness, especially in the film’s final half hour or so, as all of these plot strands interweave, leading to a fracas and some at least partial resolution surrounding Christmas and its aftermath. Trish finds out she’s pregnant, which surprises Terry, as he has known for years he’s “shooting blanks”. Dean in the meantime finds out his cancer has returned and he loses his one remaining testicle due to his inaction in following up his treatment of five years ago. Not exactly the stuff of sophisticated comedy, obviously, but Spence and Lawrence inhabit these characters so fully that it’s hard to completely ignore their supposed peril and not get caught up in their personal foibles.

Terry and Dean could be seen as putative cousins of the McKenzies of SCTV fame, but there’s an even better analog, though it probably won’t be remembered by very many. An early 1970s Canadian film called Goin’ Down the Road traveled much this same territory (literally and figuratively). Two desperate buddies set out to better their lives and find out “success” is a relative term. If that film had a more serious ambience at times, in certain ways the subtext of FUBAR: Balls to the Wall is even darker, though it’s surrounded by such mayhem and nonstop “noise” that it may take a moment or two of reflection after the film has ended to fully digest everything that’s been dealt with. Cancer, infidelity, attempted suicide—is this really the stuff of comedy? At least sporadically in FUBAR: Balls to the Wall, it most certainly is.

FUBAR: Balls to the Wall may indeed play better to Canadian audiences than to anyone “south of the border.” While Terry and Dean are certainly “types” that virtually anyone from anywhere will recognize, there’s also a certain Canadian flavor to these proceedings that may make the film more instantly accessible to our Maple Leaf loving cousins up north. The film has the haphazard feel of something that was thrown together on the run, ostensibly not the case as evidently hundreds of hours of footage was shot and then an arduous editing process took place (some of that footage is included on this Blu-ray as deleted scenes). FUBAR: Balls to the Wall has less of a “real” mockumentary feel than it does a sort of voyeuristic quality, as if we’re peeking into the sordid lives of two hapless, fumbling guys who are childlike at best, and childish at worst. There is undeniable humor here, but it’s often the embarrassed humor of not quite believing how stupid some people can be.

Fubar: Balls to the Wall Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Despite having been filmed on what was probably a miniscule budget, FUBAR: Balls to the Wall pops fairly nicely on Blu-ray, courtesy of an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. While there are moments of softness and overblown contrast (probably due to the natural lighting utilized for the bulk of this film), colors are very nicely saturated and the wealth of close-ups reveal some amazing fine detail (some of which in fact you probably won't be that excited to see, like the giant mucus bubble that escapes from one of our hero's mouth). Some of the location footage of the oil fields is quite impressive, with nicely detailed smoke (as in pollution) littering the orange hued sky. The image boasts well above average sharpness and clarity and for such a lo-fi affair delivers some surprisingly top notch image quality.

Fubar: Balls to the Wall Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Again perhaps somewhat surprisingly, FUBAR: Balls to the Wall delivers very solid and at times incredibly robust audio courtesy of a lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix. Immersion is best in several of the crowd scenes, whether that be the opening party sequence, which fairly drowns in claustrophobic sonic activity, or some of the work scenes later in the film, which benefit from some very smartly placed ambient effects. As might be expected from a film about two headbangers, there's a glut of source cues, including a fun karaoke version of Boston's "More Than a Feeling," all of which are presented with excellent fidelity and some aggressive low end. While some of the dialogue gets lost in the shuffle of too many people talking simultaneously, everything is presented quite clearly in terms of actual fidelity.

Fubar: Balls to the Wall Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Cast and Crew Commentary is a pretty raucous affair, with Lawrence and Spence frequently talking over each other. It's a party hearty sort of ambience and therefore fits in perfectly with the overall feel of the film itself, just don't count on anything introspective or actually related to the nuts (so to speak) and bolts of filmmaking.
• Deleted Scenes (HD; 18:03) contains several jettisoned scenes which offer a few scattered laughs, including more of the melancholy Christmas sequence which is where this film plumbs some unexpected emotional depths.

Fubar: Balls to the Wall Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

FUBAR: Balls to the Wall will probably appeal much more to a younger male demographic than it will to the public at large. It's rude, crude and generally unkempt, like many younger males themselves. But hidden underneath all the "F-bombs" and potty humor is a surprisingly sweet heart, as evidenced by the film's final third, when a really unexpected amount of emotion starts to seep through the madness. If you like raucous, unapologetically uncouth humor, you'll probably love FUBAR: Balls to the Wall. Otherwise, if you're intrigued or at the very least interested, you might want to rent this first to see how you feel about that all time comedy standby, testicular cancer.