3 out of 5 stars
Rated R. Directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.
Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Paul Dano and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
Now playing.
Some simple, weird, silly ideas — almost one-line jokes, really — produce unique and incredible movies. On the other hand, sometimes it takes making a movie to realize such an idea just can't sustain one. Heavily buzzed and undeniably unique, Swiss Army Man falls just enough to the better side of the middle between these two extremes to qualify as a worthwhile piece of feature-length entertainment.
Writer-directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert are perhaps best known for their contributions to such absurdist comedy TV as NTSF:SD:SUV and Children's Hospital; fans of those shows and other Adult Swim-spawned fare will recognize the almost reckless mix of high and low comedy that immediately inspired Swiss Army Man's other, unofficial title: "that farting corpse movie." And as its titular cadaver, Manny, Daniel Radcliffe does indeed provide a lot of comic moments via bodily emanations. But there's more going on in this flick, which turns out to be much more about loneliness than laughs.
The movie opens on grizzled, despondent Hank (Paul Dano of There Will Be Blood and Little Miss Sunshine) preparing to hang himself on a deserted shoreline. Hank's suicide is interrupted by Manny's appearance at the water's edge; Hank goes to Manny's aid, and is immediately convinced of Manny's corpsitude by Manny's voluminous expulsion of gases. So voluminous, in fact, that Hank has the unlikely idea of riding Manny to civilization atop the ocean like a fart-powered Sea-Doo. Which works! Until Hank's celebratory gestures of triumph cause Manny to, uh, corpsize. Later, Hank regains consciousness and finds Manny on a different beach, this one with the look of Pacific Northwest coastline and evidence of at least semi-recent human activity.
(How Hank and Manny ended up on the first beach is alluded to only much later in overheard dialog.)
What follows could've been a mere bizarre-comedy buddy flick version of Castaway, with Hank making his way back to the world carrying Manny on his back and using his various "talents" — his farts, his dried-out spark-causing skin, other, much more gross/hilarious gifts — to survive along the way.
But during the trek, Manny becomes more than a tool to Hank. He becomes both a traveling companion and a mirror of sorts, reflecting the events and life choices that led Hank to ending up (beginning?) with a literal noose around his neck with much more clarity than Hank could ever have hoped to achieve on his own.
The film's look and vibe are emphatically "indie," falling somewhere between Garden State and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In fact, several scenes in which Hank rebuilds situations from "the real world" out of whatever he can find in the woods are reminiscent of a lower-budget "analog" Gondry — fantastical and cutely twee at the same time — and these imbue the film with a sense of genuine wonder. And the sound design is pretty much immaculate, with perfectly chosen and placed songs defying their own fourth wall to become part of the action onscreen.
For their part, Kwan and Scheinert do their best to offset all of the plot's ridiculousness with real heart. It works often enough to raise Swiss Army Man above the level of novelty spectacle for long moments at a time — at least until an ending that aims for transcendent celebration but kneecaps itself with its obvious we-can't-help-ourselves desire to shoehorn in one last novelty spectacle, while manipulating viewers into post-screening arguments about what was really "real" at the same time.
This article appears in Jun 30 – Jul 7, 2016.