Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..... Yeah. That was a movie. There were definitely actors. On film. That I watched in a theater.
What?!
Okay, so, unsure exactly how to begin my review of Tusk. Did I enjoy it? Maybe. Probably. I'm not entirely sure. Is it going to stick with me for a good long while? Absolutely. Was it a good movie... who the hell knows! All I know is that it was a movie and I didn't hate it. I was just incredibly shocked that what I watched was what I watched. Kevin Smith must be able to essentially do whatever the hell he wants because... my God... I would've been kicked out of college if I'd turned in that script.
So, the way Tusk came to be was someone posted a (hoax) craigslist ad saying they would offer free lodging if the tenant agreed to dress as a walrus. Kevin Smith saw this and it became the topic of discussion during one of his podcasts. Throughout the podcast him and his pod-partner Scott Mosier improvised a movie they could make out of this-- a sick, horror comedy that would only make a few people actually laugh. Then, decided to make a hashtag out of it for listeners to vote if they would ACTUALLY see the movie if it was made. #Walrusyes is what most people voted on. So, because Kevin Smith is ballsy enough to do it... he wrote the script and filmed the movie. And for that... good for him! That's a pretty cool story on how a movie came to be. Riffing with your buddy becomes an actual feature film. How many times have you been joking with a friend and going... dude, we should write that down and film it, but it never happens. Kevin Smith can basically do that whenever he wants... and not like in an Adam Sandler way. Technincally Adam Sandler can do whatever he wants too. He makes movies with his best friends as sort of inside jokes between them that don't translate to LITERALLY ANYONE ELSE except the six involved. However, while this was almost exactly like what Kevin Smith did... the inside joke is shared with a lot more than six people.
Essentially what happens is we're following Wallace (Wallace? Like walrus... get it?) played by a porn-stached Justin Long as he travels to Canada in order to get some good juicy material for his podcast. He meets up with an old man, Howard Howe (Michael Parks) who claims to have a lot of stories from his fruitful life. One story, in particular, that he relays to Wallace is one where he was saved by a real-life walrus back in his twenties and that he's never met a man on this Earth who has given him as much fulfillment as that walrus did. Boom... Wallace falls asleep unconscious. He awakens the next morning to find most of his left leg amputated. This goes on for a bit until it is revealed that Ol' Howie is so in love with the walrus that he is going to butcher Wallace up and sew together a human/walrus suit and turn Wallace into a full-blown walrus. Sound pretty fucked up? I assure you it's even more fucked up than you can imagine. The rest of the film involves Wallace's friends (Haley Joel Osment?? Hell yeah!) tracking him down with a French Detective played by (what?!) Johnny Depp.
Here's the deal with the movie: I don't think I can give it an accurate letter grade due to the fact that I'm only pretty sure I enjoyed it and I'm not sure at all why. I do these reviews in order to help out my good readers into deciding whether or not they should spend their hard earned pesos on films that I see. However, I have no idea who in the hell I would ever recommend this movie to. There's no one I can think of that I would say, "hey, check out Tusk, it's your kinda movie." Because it's no ones kind of movie. Not even mine. But I think I liked it. It had the perfect amount of crazy, weird, gory, bizarre and fucked upedness to satisfy my movie cravings. So, don't take it from me to see this movie. And if you see it and hate it, don't blame me. But, if I've (somehow) convinced you that seeing this movie is a good idea... and you still enjoy it... you are one sick son of a bitch.
Eh. It was still better than Ninja Turtles.
B-
