Search - Spanking the Monkey / Simple Men / Lucky Stiff (Triple Feature) on DVD

Cannibalism, incest and general weirdness

Genevieve Hayes | Australia | 05/21/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The three films in this triple pack have almost nothing in common, except for the fact that they are all incredibly weird.

Much like "Happiness", a black comedy about a pedophile, "Spanking the Monkey" is the sort of film that will not appeal to everyone. It's a film about a teenage boy who falls in love with his mother. This film is billed as a black comedy, and I suppose it is, in retrospect, but I didn't feel like I was watching a comedy when I was watching it. What this film is, is a truly amazing character study of a suburban family that contains some laughs but also realizes that a lot of what it's dealing with just shouldn't be laughed at. Writer/director David O. Russell ("Three Kings", "I Heart Huckabees") takes a subject that most people wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole, and explains how it could happen and the consequences if it does happen. The result is a film that feels completely believable and that is also completely compelling - 5 stars

"Simple Men" is possibly the most pretentious films I have ever seen. I watched this film to the end in the hope of finding something that resembled a plot but was sorely disappointed (the back of the cover plot description is essentially: two brothers go on a road-trip to find their on-the-lam anarchist father and in the process meet an assortment of odd characters). All that happened was a bunch of characters, that I cared very little about, said a lot of things that I think were intended to be deep and profound but which I found to be meaningless - 1 star

"The Lucky Stiff" is a comedy about cannibalism. The film starts off poorly, with most of the jokes in the first half of the film falling flat, but in the second half, when the action shifts to somewhere in Hillbilly country, the film improves. Sure, the jokes are still lame, but I actually found myself laughing at them (What can I say? I find jokes about inbred Hillbillies to be funny). In spite of the rather dark nature of the subject matter, this is actually a pretty nice film. There's a nice romantic subplot in the film and by the end of the film, I did want the main character to end happily - 2 stars

Each of the films in this pack can be best described as an acquired taste. However, given its price and the prices of each of these DVDs when purchased individually, if you are even interested in seeing one of these films, it is well worthwhile.
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