Director: James Gunn
Year Released: 2010
Rating: 1.0
A fry cook (Rainn Wilson) has his junkie wife (Liv Tyler) nabbed by a drug lord (Kevin Bacon), so in his crazed, possibly schizophrenic brain he figures he needs to save the world from evil-doers and tries to become a superhero. It's a very uneasy mix of (pathetic) humor and (intense) gore - see Wilson's brain probed by tentacles! see Ellen Page's face blown off! - made into some misguided superhero 'spoof': though mixing graphic violence and comedy is tricky to begin with (even Miike fumbles with it), Gunn misses it completely, and instead of laughing it's all so very cringe-inducing. The fact that the Wilson character is so blatantly mentally-ill - he thinks nothing of maiming innocent (if rude) people - only makes this more intolerable. With no reasonable, relatively decent human beings in this, there's nobody to side with, and when Wilson is afforded a happy ending (when he should be in a prison cell or in a padded room), it's a dark, mean joke on the audience. In the I-Never-Want-To-Hear-This-Out-of-the-Mouth-of-Ellen-Page-Ever-Again Dept.: "It's all gushy!"
