The review for “Strange Wilderness” can be summed up into one statement: awful. There are no redeeming qualities about this movie. After leaving the theater, you will not turn to the person to the left of you and say, ‘That movie has its moments.’ If you do state this, you are a liar or you laugh at anything. If you are a liar, stay home and tell people you went to see it. Opening weekend, this movie did not even crack the top 10 in box office earnings, so it is a safe bet that whoever you are talking to has not seen the movie. If you laugh at anything, save your money and just make shadow puppets. Don’t waste eight dollars on “Strange Wilderness”. In the movie, “Strange Wilderness” is the name of a wildlife television show. Peter Gaulke (Steve Zahn) took over this show from his father. Gaulke has run his father’s legacy and show into the ground. The television station decides to cancel “Strange Wilderness.” In an attempt to keep the show on air, Gaulke and his cronies go on the search for Bigfoot in South America. Many crazy events take place during the trip. After the trip the movie runs for another 20 minutes unnecessarily.
The most disappointing part of “Strange Wilderness” is that it has amazing potential. The movie was written by Fred Wolfe. He is not a household name, yet he was the head writer on Saturday Night Live from 1992-1996. He then wrote “Black Sheep” and “Dirty Work.” Both of these are classics. Anyone watching “Strange Wilderness” would have an easier time believing that the script was written by pygmy marmosets than a legitimate comedy writer. He wrote about drugs, sex and wildlife shows, yet it never was close to entertaining. It should have been easy with the cast assembled.
“Superbad,” “Grandma’s Boy,” “Super Troopers,” “Saving Silverman” and “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story” are some of the previous movies that this cast had worked on. It seems with all of the experience of acting in extremely successful comedy movies or a comedy troop (Kevin Heffernan in Broken Lizard) would make this movie funny by default.
Fred Wolfe probably thought the same thing as he wrote it and directed it. It must have been too late when he realized that the movie needed direction. It also needed more than the same three jokes told slightly different throughout the movie. It is hard to blame the cast in this movie because the talent is there. It makes one wonder how much worse “Strange Wilderness” could have been.
The comedy in the movie is derived from scenes with heavy drug use or extremely crude behavior. At times drug use (like in “Super Troopers”) and crude humor (like in “Scary Movie”) are very funny. “Strange Wilderness” never found a balance between drugs, sex and cursing anywhere in the movie. The cursing is fine as long as it fits. For many of the actors, the naughty language was forced. That made it more awkward than funny. The sex jokes revolved around the male member. It reminds one of elementary or middle school with a better vocabulary.
The only way anyone could find “Strange Wilderness” funny is if they were on more drugs than the cast. The only problem is that this would kill them. This would be a better choice than living through another Adam Sandler-less Happy Madison production.
On a scale of one to 10, this movie does not deserve the time to be rated. Twelve movies made more money than “Strange Wilderness.” This included another comedy “Over Her Dead Body.” How does a veteran comedy writer with an all-star cast make less money than a movie with Eva Langoria? Simply, the writer does not care about the product and the cast could not produce any positive results.
Instead of going to see “Strange Wilderness” rent a camera and make a movie of your own. If you are lucky Happy Madison Productions will buy it for millions and release it to the public. As long as you can write better than a barn animal, your movie will be better than “Strange Wilderness.”
Tom Pittman is a fourth-year student majoring in psychology with a minor in mathematics. He can be reached at TP623014@wcupa.edu.