“Mother Schmuckers” is a Chaotic, Unfocused, Brutally Unfunny Waste of Time [Sundance Review]

When a person watches a movie as terrible as “Mother Schmuckers,” the natural thing is to examine the seams to see if this awfulness was indeed the point. The movies that turn into this skid almost always fail because there’s no way to capture the earnest magic that resides in the “so-bad-it’s-good” cannon, much in the same way that one can either see Shoeless Joe Jackson in an Iowa cornfield, or they can’t. Indeed, either the magic lives in something or it doesn’t, and while “Mother Schmuckers” does feel earnestly made, there’s absolutely nothing special, fun, or redeeming about the film, which never elevates itself beyond the dreadful (even ironically).    

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Written, directed, and starring brothers Harpo and Lenny Guit, “Mother Schmuckers” is less a film and more of a crudely strung together collection of scenes with only the most tenuous connection to a plot. Ostensibly a day-in-the-life yarn about brothers Issachar and Zabulon (the Guit brothers) in present-day Brussels, the film has a narrative undercurrent about their mother’s missing dog, January Jack, and their attempts to retrieve it. And while this struggle to get their mother’s dog back is the most consistent of the bits played for laughs in the picture, it serves as an excuse rather than an engine for the comedy of the piece.

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Throughout the majority of its 70-minute runtime, “Mother Schmuckers” is little more than a showcase for the juvenile humor of its leads, as the moments that are played for chuckles lean heavily on gross-out humor tuned to a thirteen-year-old boy’s comedic sensibilities. What tone does exist in the picture positions it as a comedy, yet the set-pieces (if one could even call them that) have the most immature and/or non-sensical pay-offs that one wonders who this movie is for. For example, the lights go out in one scene where the brothers are being detained by a security guard, only for them to come back on with someone’s naked ass in another person’s face right as they cut a fart. Later, when one of the brothers happens upon a discarded hamburger in the trash, he bites into it gleefully only to discover that it is filled with maggots.

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These scenes are representative of the whole, featuring jokes that are either played out for everyone through puberty, or not funny at all. There’s a low-budget gonzo element to the production that is reminiscent of John Waters, for these characters are not the traditionally beautiful and polished screen idols audiences are accustomed to, yet there’s no “there” here. The Guit brothers aren’t elevating trash or bad taste into a visually bold cinematic experience, nor are they crafting unique characters that challenge or surprise the audience. Most of “Mother Schmuckers” is just a series of scenes that offer the Guit brothers an excuse to start yelling and slapping each other like two middle school cousins that haven’t seen each other since last summer.

And while this might have been a fun thing to experience as a kid (or for the Guit brothers on-set), like a tired aunt or uncle just trying to sip their beer near a couple of rough-housing nephews screaming and rolling around, it’s a thoroughly unpleasant thing to endure from the periphery. Although the primary conceit of “Mother Schmuckers” is Issachar and Zabulon’s quest to recover their mom’s lost dog, the film loses sight of this often, detouring to a low-fi music video shoot for no particular reason at all, and later to a bestiality-themed bordello.

It all feels less like a movie and more of a scattered pastiche of whacky ideas pasted together in the name of chaotic humor. Characters drift in and out of the film not for any cohesive narrative function, but rather to give the Guit brothers a reason to argue, start slap-fighting, and move on to the next poorly conceived bit. Characters like Choukri (Habib Ben Toufous), an aspiring filmmaker friend of Issachar and Zabulon, seem to exist in the picture just to move the brothers on to their next gag, and add nothing to the story save an avenue through which the Guit brothers can tack on a few more screaming slap-fights.

It’s just exhausting, and it’s all mixed up with a series of nonsensical directing choices that add nothing to the visual palette of the effort (what’s with all the slow zooms into people’s mouths?). It makes for a tedious viewing experience that leaves no doubt by the end that this was indeed unintentional: that this is earnestly bad with no eye towards the ironic.

Maybe one day folks will come around to “Mother Schmuckers” as something so sincerely and unintentionally terrible that’s it’s worth watching if only as a joke, yet even that is a longshot. Like January Jack, this one should stay lost. [F]

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