By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
Fans of Don Coscarelli who love “Bubba Ho-Tep” and remember when Coscarelli strode across the Loft Cinema stage to introduce that film will find a less clever movie in his newest, “John Dies at the End,” playing at the Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd.
Eschewing the role of cinema hipster, the filmmaker has been seduced into getting in touch with his Roger Corman side. Flaunting greasy strings of gross-out scenes and flatulence humor, Coscarelli has taken a step backward in his cinema alchemy efforts to spin gold out of trash.
However, if you’re young enough and your sensibilities are undeveloped enough…if you prefer naughty boy energy more than parental logic…“John” could be your kind of movie. No doubt, Coscarelli is shooting for a younger audience than the one he got with “Bubba Ho-Tep.”
For that, he should be right on target.
Paul Giamatti is loving his own melodramatic voice playing the cynical journalist Arnie, interviewing Dave (Chase Williamson) in a tawdry late-night Chinese restaurant without any other customers. Dave knows about a newer and more deadly street drug called “soy sauce.”
This is one of those drugs that provide such an extreme high, it is well worth risking death to experience the pleasure. It isn’t long before Dave and his thrill-junkie pal John (Rob Mayes) are enjoying the phantasmagorical fruits of soy sauce paranoia.
Apparently, though it isn’t entirely clear, John dies more toward the beginning, but comes back to encourage (and haunt) his buddy Dave. There are also a bunch of aliens involved, and a monster made entirely of left-over vegetables and additional unrecognizable items from lower down the yucky food chain.
Portraying some of these surrealistic mind-bender experiences is a big part of the fun, combining nightmare scenarios and cartoonish Armageddon’s. There’s not a plot to any of this, just randomly disgusting experiences.
Rolling Stone called this phlick “Ghostbusters” for stoners, which sounds about right, actually. So if that label seems to fit on your forehead, there’s no more reason to wonder.
Just got with it, have fun and don’t drink the soy sauce.
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