Chickens in the Shadows

2010 musical mockumentary

Rating: 9/20

Plot: A pop duo from the late-70's called Toasters 'n' Moose reunites for a trio of shows.

This is Vincent Gargiulo's only feature-length film. He's got a bunch of shorts (including "The Muppetless Movie" which is a trailer for a fake movie that features humans playing the Muppet characters), but I'm not watching them after seeing this and "The Muppetless Movie," a trailer for a fake movie that features humans playing the Muppet characters. That and Chickens in the Shadows (no idea why the movie is called this, by the way) are funny ideas, but they never move beyond funny-idea territories. Gargiulo should probably just pitch ideas to other writers and filmmakers.

Toasters has a line in here about how something is "funny because it's unexpected and it doesn't make any sense." Gargiulo seems to assume that his movie and characters are going to be funny because there are moments when things are unexpected and don't make any sense. Unfortunately,the ideas are so poorly written and executed, and there's very little in this movie that is actually funny. The no-budget filmmaking would be excusable if the material was better, but these jokes just don't land. Terrible acting also gets in the way, ruining any chance at authenticity needed to make a mockumentary like this work at all. If the acting was better, I'm still not sure this would work because they've got nothing at all to work with. Estelle Piper, in her first role, might give the worst performance, but that might have more to do with her having the most lines. Really, they're all pretty bad at this.

I did almost enjoy the appearance of a "singing pervert" and one song with the lyrics "Taste the biscuit, taste the goodness of the biscuit" that was performed in a secondhand store. That almost sounded like a Ween outtake.