Gentlemen Broncos Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.5

Gentlemen Broncos Blu-ray Movie Review

This one got bucked straight out of the saddle.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater March 4, 2010

I credit Napoleon Dynamite with giving us the whole current, indie shabby geek chic, 1980s-meets-the-00s aesthetic that’s been co-opted and diluted by Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, and other quirky, cutesy low-budget comedies of late. At the time, it was something completely unique, all tater tots and unicorn drawings, He-Man figurines and Trapper Keeper notebooks. For us children of the ‘80s, it was instant nostalgia of the hey, do you remember__________ (fill in the blank with some obscure Reagan-era TV reference) variety. The thing is, while trolling YouTube for the Gummi Bears theme song or reminiscing about how awesome that Castle Greyskull playset was are good things to do at 2am, mildly inebriated and homesick for childhood, that kind of emotional pandering doesn’t exactly hold up in cinematic court —not for long, anyway. Once the novelty wears off, if the story isn’t compelling and the characters aren’t relatable, believable, or even likeable, you’re just left with a bunch of thrift-store junk that somehow never made it to the landfill. Such is the case with Gentlemen Broncos, the latest film by Dynamite director Jared Hess.

Jemaine Clement points out the best suffix to describe Gentlemen Broncos.

While Napoleon Dynamite reveled in a very general kind of 1980s geekery, Broncos goes for nerd-subculture specificity. Picture the book section of your local Salvation Army. Now, zoom in on the sci-fi shelf and pick out only those 4-for-a-dollar titles printed between, say, 1975 and 1985. Look at the covers, with their bizarre alien landscapes, muscle-bound, feather-haired heroes holding swords or laser guns, and chimerical creatures in the background with their jaws gaping. That, in essence, is Gentlemen Broncos.

The story concerns Benjamin (Michael Angarano), a homeschooled teenager and budding sci-fi writer who has penned an opus called Yeast Lords: The Bronco Years, which is just about as terrible as it sounds. (Part of the joke is that the script treats Yeast Lords with utmost reverence.) Benjy lives alone with his wacko fashion designer mom Judith (Jennifer Coolidge), whose disheveled dresses, pieced together from cast-off thrift store materials, are the kind of hand-made, who in their right mind would buy this oddities that give Etsy.com a bad name. (Visit Regretsy.com if you don’t know what I’m talking about.) When Benjamin goes to The Cletus Festival, a writer’s camp hosted by turtleneck and leather jacket-wearing sci-fi legend Ronald Chevalier (Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement), he enters Yeast Lords into the camp’s literary competition. Chevalier, who’s on the verge of being dropped from his publishing house, blatantly plagiarizes from Benjamin’s manuscript, churning out his own version of the story, Brutus and Balzaak, which is soon to become a runaway bestseller. Meanwhile, Lonnie Donaho, a young Navajo auteur (Héctor Jiménez) and his would-be producer Tabatha (Halley Feiffer) “option” the story from Benjamin for $500—the check is post- dated for a year later—and set out to shoot their VHS camcorder version.

So, we’ve got several different iterations of the Yeast Lords epic here, and the film occasionally leaves the bleak humdrum of rural Utah reality to enter the phantasmagorical sci-fi world of The Bronco Years. Benjamin’s original vision for the story—a tribute to his late father—follows Bronco (Sam Rockwell), the “Last of the Yeast Lords,” a bearded, mountain man- style wanderer who gets captured by Daysius (Edgar Oliver), an evil conquer-the-universe sort who cuts off one of Bronco’s “nads” in order to start a clone army. Chevalier changes Bronco into Brutus—still played by Rockwell—a very gay, very camp doofus who sports long white locks, a truly bitchin’ ‘stache, and wears a pink cape and precariously high heels. All of these sequences feature bizarro creations that look like Napoleon Dynamite drawings come to life—deer that shoot lasers out of their asses, liger-like cougars, and one-eyed freakazoids who ride around on what appear to be wheel-mounted La-Z-Boys. But perhaps I’m making it sound too complicated. These sci-fi sequences are really just brief interludes that have nothing to do with the actual plot, and really only serve to distract us from the fact that, well, there really isn’t any plot.

The thing is, the Yeast Lords scenes are really the only thing that Gentlemen Broncos has going for it. I wish that co-writer and director Jared Hess had simply scrapped the “real world” stuff altogether and made Barbarella 2 instead, taking the kitschy sci-fi of Yeast Lords to the extreme. I just find it very hard to care about Benjamin’s drama- less familial drama. His plotline lacks any kind of emotional center besides the throw-away motivation that he’s writing The Bronco Years to honor his dead father. Very little actually happens. Benjy defends his mom’s honor against a slimy businessman, shares a pukey kiss with Tabatha, and slums around town with Mike White as his mulleted, python-toting “Guardian Angel”—it’s a church thing—but it all feels dry and non-essential. It certainly doesn’t help that Michael Angarano has less on-screen charisma than an unpaid extra chattering mutely away in the background. While Jon Heder’s mouth-breathing Napoleon Dynamite was compelling enough as a character to carry that film’s threadbare plot, Angarano’s merely milquetoast Benjamin is a killjoy to watch. He sighs in perpetual disappointment—his sci-fi epic botched by one exploitive hack after another—and we do too.

The only bright stars in this galaxy are Sam Rockwell, who’s like a coked-out, hillbilly cousin to the character that he played in Moon, and Jemaine Clement, who perpetually wears one of those dorky Bluetooth earpieces, and speaks with a syrupy, self-obsessed gravitas about the “juvenescent, ripe minds” at the writer’s camp. Unfortunately, most of the awkward, off-time humor that made Napoleon Dynamite such a success fizzles out here like a dud bottle rocket. Hess’ white-bread-with-the-crusts-cut-off comedy—borne of a distinct Mormon piety—is awfully juvenile, obsessed with gonads, corn-filled turds, racial stereotypes, and the overuse of “flippin’” and other faux-swear words. It’s youth group-safe, sure, and it’s a far cry from the sex- centric gross-outs of most teen comedies, but Gentlemen Broncos squanders the potential hilarity of its premise.

Gentlemen Broncos Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

While not quite out-of-this-world on Blu-ray, Gentlemen Broncos' 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer is solid and seems to accurately represent the film's surfeit of visual novelties and oddities. The real contrast here is between the bleak world of rural Utah and the more fantastical landscapes of Yeast Lords. The "real life" portions of the story have a slightly flat quality, with realistic colors—even if they are wacko pastels—and tamed contrast. When the story moves into sci-fi territory, though, the image really starts to pop, with supersaturated blue skies, pink vomit, and an appropriately otherworldly look. Most of these sequences were shot against green screen—so they do look distinctly artificial—but they work brilliantly within the context of the plot, truly emulating the aesthetic of clunky '70s sci-fi and then taking it to the extreme. Black levels are strong but not overbearing, and while skin tones are a bit wonky at times—pallid during the real scenes and pinkish or yellowish during the sci-fi parts—this seems to be intentional. Clarity is consistent throughout, with more than adequate sharpness and detail. Just check out the scraggly bush of Sam Rockwell's beard, the strange threading of Vanaya's sort-of fishnet shirt, or the fine texture of Ronald Chevalier's brown leather jacket. Grain is thin and natural, and there are no compression-related quirks to be found. Overall, this is a great transfer and I only wish it accompanied a better movie.

Gentlemen Broncos Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

I wasn't expecting aural fireworks or anything, but I was seriously underwhelmed by Gentlemen Broncos' DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track, which offers very few sci-fi sonic thrills and almost no immersion. I will say this: the track is clean and bright and detailed, with a well-balanced mix and perfect dialogue prioritization, but the sound design—if you can call it that—just isn't interesting at all. The rear speakers remain quiet or silent for almost the entire film, only truly lumbering into action during the laser and rocket-heavy climax. Even here, there are just a few small cross-channel movements and some modest LFE engagement during an explosion, but that's about it. I kept craning to listen for ambience throughout the film, but I didn't hear much. I'm also completely drawing a blank on the score—I literally can't remember any of it—which should tell you something. Even my normally extensive notes only yield one comment about the music: "Some crazy Peruvian flutes." I don't even remember writing that. Still, there's nothing technically wrong with this track aside from the fact that it comes from a somewhat uninspired source.

Gentlemen Broncos Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Commentary by Director and Co-writer Jared Hess, Co-writer Jerusha Hess, and DP Munn Powell
Hess, his co-writer wife, and the film's cinematographer deliver an oddly dull and almost hushed track that doesn't really sustain interest. I wish we would've been given a wacko three-way track with Sam Rockwell, Jemaine Clement, and Edgar Oliver instead.

Deleted Scenes (SD, 5:53)
Includes five deleted scenes that are just about unbearable.

Outtakes Reel: A Buttload of Keepsakes (SD, 8:48)
Normally nine minutes of outtakes would seem a bit much, but I laughed more here than I did during the entire film, mostly because of Sam Rockwell cracking up while improvising.

One Nutty Movie: Behind the Scenes of Gentlemen Broncos (1080p, 15:29)
A fairly fun making-of documentary that takes us on-set and features interviews with many of the actors and crew members.

Mini-Docs (SD, approx. 20 min.)
This is a collection of short behind-the-scenes vignettes, produced, I assume, for consumption on the internet. There are a few funny segments, mostly involving Sam Rockwell, but most of it feels like filler. Includes The Art of Relaxating (1:41), Sam and Jared Green Screen (1:09), Jemaine Look-Alike (00:50), VHS Film (1:21), Edgar Oliver Intro (1:10), Richard Wright, Jesus and Dino (00:51), Sam and Jerusha: Creative Process (1:01), Sam and Edgar Snack Table (1:31), Mike White's Teeth (1:01), Mike White Yeast Facility (1:28), Turkey Testicles (1:18), Dart Gun (1:04), Mike White's Hair (1:15), Sam Gun Practice (00:59), Sam's Smoothie (1:03), Edgar Oliver Wrap (1:29), The Spurlock Trio (1:25), and Chance of a Lifetime (1:45).

Gentlemen Broncos Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Gentlemen Broncos is one of those comedies that works much better as a trailer—and if you saw the totally rad trailer for this one, you'll know what I mean. The film's laughs come in short spurts, separated by long stretches where you'll be perhaps interested enough to keep watching, but too bored to care. Lifelong Napoleon Dynamite fans may want to give Broncos the old blind buy, but for everyone else, this is cautious rental material.