Yoga Hosers

2016 horror-comedy

Rating: 8/20

Plot: Two teens have to defend their convenience store and possibly the world from tiny Canadian Nazi guys made of bratwurst and sauerkraut.

I have bad news about Kevin Smith. The man has completely lost his mind.

In a way, I don't want to trash this movie. I want to applaud a filmmaker who has had some success and then spends his career making movies that he wants to make with no worry about whether or not the work will have commercial appeal. But here's the thing. I'm not sure if Kevin Smith knows that a movie like this won't have commercial appeal. I think he might be delusional, thinking that something as stupid as this has a chance to find him an audience similar to Clerks or Chasing Amy.

I'll start with the good. The rapport between Kevin Smith's daughter (Harley Quinn Smith, of course) and Johnny Depp's daughter (Lily-Rose Depp) is pretty good. Apparently, they're BFF's in real life, and their chemistry as BFF's in the movie works really well. That's evident from the get-go when they perform a little rap-rock song at the beginning, and the poor writing actually doesn't seem all that bad as they bounce lines off each other. Their vivaciousness is the best thing about Yoga Hosers, and although that's a backhanded compliment if I've ever typed one, I do think they both have a future in the business. I mean, of course they do. Look who their dads are.

I also kind of liked Justin Long who is about to be trapped in a career where he's doing nothing but computer commercials and Kevin Smith movies. He plays Yogi Bayer, and I know what you're thinking so I won't bother typing it.

I'm trying to think of something else good about this. There probably isn't anything. It's neither funny nor scary, and a horror-comedy should probably be one of those. The lines are completely unpredictable, but it's only because you can't believe you're hearing attempts at humor this bad from an established filmmaker. The characters revel in sounding Canadian, saying "aboot" more than characters in The Big Lebowski say variations of the f-word. And at one point, one of the girls says, "I'm not even supposed to be here today," and it just made me very, very sad.

Johnny Depp's character from Tusk returns. Guy Lapointe was obnoxious in Tusk. Here, either he's even worse or I'm just forgetting how annoying he was the first time. And whereas Tusk had a fun performance by Michael Parks as a juicy villain, this one has Haley Joel Osmont doing bad impressions of Schwarzenegger, Pacino, and Germans. Actually, they're probably not bad impressions at all, and I'm sorry I said that. They're probably ok impressions, but like the rest of the movie, the idea to have the "Canadian Fuhrer" doing impressions was stupid in the first place.

Stan Lee makes a cameo because somebody apparently convinced him that he made up these characters.

Kevin Smith himself also decides to have some fun, playing the diminutive Bratzis. They chirp things like "nein" and "wunderbar" either because he thought it was funny or was too lazy to look up any other German phrases. The special effects when these little villains bite it are as ridiculous as Birdemic.

It's all stupid enough to convince you that this is a parody. I'm not sure what it's a parody of exactly. It's the kind of thing I might have liked as a high schooler if it was on USA Up All Night. I just don't think Smith is making a movie for kids here though. It's probably even too dumb for them.

This is the second part of a trilogy, so we'll see these actors and probably Guy Lapointe again. I can't wait.