Swiss Army Man (2016)
Directed by Daniel Kwan
Alone on a tiny deserted island, Hank has given up all hope of ever making it home again. But one day everything changes when a dead body washes ashore, and he soon realizes it may be his last opportunity to escape certain death. Armed with his new “friend” and an unusual bag of tricks, the duo go on an epic adventure to bring Hank back to the woman of his dreams.
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What critics say influenced Swiss Army Man
Accompanied by composers Andy Hull and Robert McDowell's folksy, hum-worthy compositions and two ingenious soundtrack cues?John Williams' "Jurassic Park" theme and a slowed-down lullaby arrangement of "Cotton Eye Joe"?Hank and Manny experience a soulful connection and a common ground of regret.
The music hilariously knocks that point home, with the Daniels practically spoofing the schoolyard jangle of Karen O’s Where The Wild Things Are score, while collaging in half-remembered lyrics from “Cotton Eye Joe” and snippets of the score from Jurassic Park.
But when Radcliffe's corpse starts speaking, his brain wiped of every essential from boobs to Jurassic Park, we see that what Hank most needs is someone to talk to, someone who wants to hear his thoughts about how society works, even the stuff he barely knows himself.
In this context, junk food and pop hits become precious emblems of the modern society to which both are trying to return: a bag of cheese puffs, John Williams’s Jurassic Park theme, even lines from Rednex’s “Cotton Eye Joe.”
Most notably, though, this rag doll carcass starts talking in a manner that suggests a naïve visitor eager to learn, and Hank – an insular loner ready to introduce his new pal to such experiences as the majesty of John Williams’ “Jurassic Park” theme and the adolescent joys of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue -- enters into therapeutic confessions about his shame-ridden, emotionally choked life.
The main difference is, Swiss Army Man is much warmer to the touch, which (along with its wild natural setting and its air of childlike wonder) makes it more like a dirtier, more grown-up version of Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are .
The wilderness where they find themselves is like the world of Where The Wild Things Are , packed with ornate decorated shelters handmade from sticks and rubbish transformed by the light and the make-believe games of the men into a beautiful idyll.
Like Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums , Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep , and Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are , Swiss Army Man is almost hermetically geared toward wayward souls who long to transcend their shared loneliness, even employing those directors' penchants for handmade built environments in order to communicate Hank's familiar but seemingly individuated ennui.
The music hilariously knocks that point home, with the Daniels practically spoofing the schoolyard jangle of Karen O’s Where The Wild Things Are score, while collaging in half-remembered lyrics from “Cotton Eye Joe” and snippets of the score from Jurassic Park.
Swiss Army Man begins like Cast Away, if Wilson (Tom Hank’s beach ball) were a talking corpse, but as the film begins to peel back the subjectivity it fails to take on the fable-like qualities of a relatively similar but vastly superior film like Where The Wild Things Are.
The grave yet whimsical tenor of the film is echoed perfectly in the score by Andy Hull and Robert McDowell of the Manchester Orchestra, which evokes the tang of magical realism imbued in “Where the Wild Things Are” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” though what’s at stake here is more weighty and rooted in the earthly now.
He’s still as immobile as Terry Kiser’s corpse in Weekend at Bernie’s, but unlike that character, Manny has a personality.
Sort of like “Weekend at Bernie’s,” if it were a surrealist indie film and Bernie engaged in absurdist existential conversation, this is the weirdest movie in Radcliffe’s career.
If any of the preceding paragraph sounds like an intriguing proposition (Cast Away meets Weekend at Bernie’s!)
??½ Written and directed by the team of Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, precociously branded as "Daniels" (not even "the Daniels," just "Daniels," as in "A Film by Daniels"), this emo "Robinson Crusoe"-meets-"Weekend at Bernie's" casts Paul Dano as Hank, a desperate millennial lost in the wilderness whose beachfront suicide is interrupted by the surf-tossed delivery of a flatulent corpse (Daniel Radcliffe) that Hank embraces as a best friend, sidekick and alter ego, as well as an "all-purpose tool man" (the decomposing and leaky body functions as a water fountain, a flame starter and even a Jet Ski).
Is Daniel Radcliffe’s decision to play the said flatulent dead body in Swiss Army Man, a black indie comedy certain to invoke mention of Weekend at Bernie’s, a Shia-LaBeouf-esque way of saying “look at me, I’m being Edgy and Different”?
Equal parts Castaway, The Trouble With Harry and Weekend at Bernie’s, the surprisingly sweet and celebratory Swiss Army Man marks the feature writing and directing debut of music video directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who bill themselves as “Daniels.”
The jerking-off debate between Hank and Manny — yes, the corpse talks when the occasion arises — would remind you of Samuel Beckett if the mind of the author of Waiting for Godot found itself in the craniums of Daniels.
Clearly enjoying chemistry together, they would make a great Vladimir and Estragon for a revival of Waiting for Godot.
The film revels in its weird comic absurdity, never as existential or nihilistic as more high-brow fare such as “Waiting for Godot,” but it does feel freely mined from the cranium of Michael Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) had he been locked in solitary with nothing but a stack of Mad magazines to pass the day.
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When the corpse (Daniel Radcliffe) emits that very first fart, Hank's (named, perhaps, for Tom Hanks in "Cast Away"?) delusions begin.
It has been described as a "Cast Away" take on "Weekend at Bernie's" directed by Michel Gondry or Spike Jonze.
Think of it as “Cast Away” crossed with “Weekend at Bernie’s,” with some “iZombie” tossed in, because at a certain point, Manny begins to reanimate.
Imagine “Cast Away” meets “Weekend at Bernie’s,” as directed by Michel Gondry.
A twisted version of "Cast Away" that replaces Tom Hanks' beloved volleyball with a stinking body, it stars Paul Dano as Hank, a long stranded survivor on a desert isle.
The easy elevator pitch on Swiss Army Man is that it’s Cast Away meets Weekend At Bernie’s.
It edges into the non-sequitur weirdness of Quentin Dupieux ("Rubber," "Wrong") and the fantastical romantic yearning of Michel Gondry ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind") but doesn't persuasively mint a uniquely "Daniels" brand of oddity.
In a dazzling sequence that suggests the bad-romance-wiping effects of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” this time run in reverse, Hank tries to jog Manny’s memories of love.
The film revels in its weird comic absurdity, never as existential or nihilistic as more high-brow fare such as “Waiting for Godot,” but it does feel freely mined from the cranium of Michael Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) had he been locked in solitary with nothing but a stack of Mad magazines to pass the day.
Yep, he is a corpse throughout the entirety of the strange and tonally unsure directorial debut by "The Daniels", successful music video directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who seem to be aiming for the same do-it-yourself spirit and fantastical earnestness of Michel Gondry's and Charlie Kaufman's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind".
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Scott Pilgrim vs the World, and Love dissected the concepts of Manic Pixie Dream Girls and the selfishness of unrequited, mopey boy crushes well.
This directionless fantasy, essentially a two-hander for an overtaxed Dano and Radcliffe, marks the feature debut of music video directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (DJ Snake and Lil Jon's chaotic "Turn Down for What"), who cite as their inspirations such music-video-to-legit-cinema crossovers as Spike Jonze (Her, Adaptation) and Michel Gondry (The Science of Sleep, Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?).
Like Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums , Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep , and Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are , Swiss Army Man is almost hermetically geared toward wayward souls who long to transcend their shared loneliness, even employing those directors' penchants for handmade built environments in order to communicate Hank's familiar but seemingly individuated ennui.
It feels funny to say this about a movie that makes the campfire-beans scene in "Blazing Saddles" seem restrained, but, as Hank begins using Manny as a therapy tool, working his way toward the film's twist ending, a poignancy and a profundity emerge from beneath the stupidity.
You’d have to go as far back as Blazing Saddles to recall a scene where farting was laugh-out-loud funny for stretches or remembered above all others in a positive way.
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Actors who try to shake off a clean-cut image risk looking gimmicky or insincere – think of Julie Andrews going topless in SOB, or Christopher Reeve kissing Michael Caine in Deathtrap.
The relationship between the two feels a bit reminiscent of Of Mice and Men or Encino Man as Hank tries his damnedest to educate his newfound friend.