By Geno McGahee
Lloyd Kaufman of TROMA fame hosts this collection of stories in the DWN Production that is CHEESEBALLS, a film like no other. I say that in a good way and in a bad way, I guess, but it’s in an intentional bad way that will either get you laughing or get you angry. This film is not meant to be politically correct and it’s not. It’s far from it, but part of the point of this time, I think, is to rattle the viewer and play on their minds.
So Kaufman rants and introduces the tales and we go into a killer pizza that wants to rape people… Yes, this is the type of movie that CHEESEBALLS is.
Pizzademic
“There’s a pizza on the loose, fucking people.”
OK, I’m hardly ever at a loss for words, but I have to admit that I was quite surprised by PIZZADEMIC. We begin with a Mexican guy rejoicing that he got a green card. In the group, we have an interracial gay couple and the most offensive character of the group, a mentally challenged man that beats his girlfriend with regularity. I will leave a contact email for the groups that want to send cease and desist letters right now to the filmmaker.
The editing is intentionally bad, the acting is intentionally bad, and there are parts of this tale that are just…hilarious. I found myself laughing aloud at parts of this. Other parts were beaten to death and not funny to begin with. For instance, one fat guy keeps saying “boobs” over and over again. It wasn’t funny the first time, and it wasn’t funny the tenth time. Otherwise, there are some gross out jokes and all the other jokes are just in bad taste, but I’m not going to lie. I laughed. When the pizza guy delivers the pizza and the Mexican guy grabs his junk for no apparent reason, I laughed. When the new character showed up in a half-shirt and talked about looking for his car keys up his brother’s ass, l laughed. Maybe I’m a bad person.
Cocksucker: The Movie
A prostitute refuses to provide oral sex to her clients because her mother asked her not to…even on her death bed. He mother insisted that she never suck a man off. She took it to heart, but when a client comes along and demands it, she finds out why her mother was so against it. The John turns into the devil…I think, and forces her head into his crotch. (Spoiler) Her head explodes and a cock monster comes out of her neck and attacks. Then the John is haunted by ghosts and killed. Hmmm… not a lot of thought went into this one, but I did laugh at a few moments. It wasn’t without its humor. When the John has the shits, he tells the hooker that he “has a matter to attend to.” The way he delivered it was hilarious. His transition to the devil was funny and his scream at the end was priceless. It wasn’t good…but it wasn’t all bad either.
Pizzademic 2: Suckapuss
“Maybe if you didn’t bend over to suck me off, you would have seen it coming.”
Unfortunately the follow up to PIZZADEMIC wasn’t very good. We start with a white trash father and his obese and scantily-clad son enjoying a summer day. The father is cooking on the grill and the son is enjoying his pool. We then transition over to the original pizza zombies and their mission with the evil pizza. The backstory is beaten into the ground and the comedy just doesn’t work too much here. There were a few chuckles, but overall, it just wasn’t there.
Ungabunga
Three people get stranded after their car breaks down and stumble upon a home where the KKK apparently resides. They give the trio the choice of death or “ungabunga” and it turns out that it is rape. There is a lot of rape going on in this movie. I didn’t find this one all that amusing either. Perhaps the rape humor has worn off after watching the killer pizza rape all those people… I don’t know, but this tale it seemed that they were trying too hard to be funny and they weren’t funny.
Pizzademic 3 in 3-D
Running out of ideas with the Pizzademic. It’s obvious as I finished the third where a group is looking to stop the super villain Sweet Hole Brown. There’s not a lot going on here outside of Sweet Hole Brown killing people and then having a bad fighting scene that went on for far too long. This was another tale that I really couldn’t find anything redeeming with.
The Fantastic Banana Spider Hero Boy
A mostly CGI flick with one live character throughout playing the lead role of the superhero, Banana Spider Hero Boy, a spoof of Spider-Man. I was laughing at the visual of him swinging on webs of jizz, but this one is difficult to watch because of the bad CGI. It reminded me of BLUES CLUES. Not a very good short, but it had its moments.
CHEESEBALLS, written and directed by Tom Martino, is a mixed bag. There are moments that are really funny…most of them in Pizzademic 1. At times, I get the sense that this group of friends just wanted to shoot something and came up with an idea and created it on the spot. I take my hat off to Martino for releasing this. I think that a lot of filmmakers would not out of fear of how it was received. There is a lot of stuff in here that is offensive, but the point is to offend and to amuse.
Dick jokes, rape humor and racial humor are what the film relies on. Unfortunately, it’s relied on too much. I understand that these are individual shorts put together to form this flick, but it is a lot of the same as it goes on.
I am not going to recommend or tell you not to see CHEESEBALLS. It’s unique and brave, but a lot of it drags on and is repetitive. If you like being offended or laugh at dick jokes even if they’re done over and over, it’s the film for you.
Rating: 3/10 – Pizzademic 1 was good.
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