The Guatemalan Handshake

2006 comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: During an electrical outage, the boyfriend of the daughter of a demolition derby champ turns up missing. His friend, a little girl named Turkeylegs, searches for him.

I'm not sure what a "Guatemalan handshake" has to do with anything here. You can look that up and judge for yourself, but I'm pretty sure the title is a non-sequitur. This is a bit of a non-sequitur of a movie, one that plays like a stranger and darker Napoleon Dynamite or something that Quentin Dupieux would make. There's an absurdist humor, plot and character developments that don't make a whole lot of sense, and what appears to be an entire music video in the middle of the thing, but while it doesn't appear to be on the surface saying much of anything, I'm pretty sure it's a movie that deals with loss. It approaches any themes like a splatter painter, but I think it might be there.

Will Oldham is in this and even sings half of that song in the aforementioned music video. That's a take on the Moldy Peaches "Jorge Regula" with entirely different lyrics.

I've seen a couple Todd Rohal shorts and The Catechism Cataclysm. I enjoy this particular brand of humor but can see how most normal people would find it disconcerting. You've got to admit one thing though--the guy knows how to title a film.