A man walks across New York City in a perfectly straight line (while watching out for wizards).
CONTENT WARNING: Adult language.
All posts by Gregory J. Smalley (366weirdmovies)
CAPSULE: AJ GOES TO THE DOG PARK (2025)
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DIRECTED BY: Toby Jones (II)
FEATURING: AJ Thompson, Crystal Cossette Knight
PLOT: Mild-mannered AJ’s life is thrown into disorder when Fargo’s mayor changes his beloved dog park into a dog-free “blog park,” so he decides to run for mayor himself.
COMMENTS: Comedy is subjective. Surreal comedy is even more subjective. AJ Goes to the Dog Park bills itself as “a surreal and gag-driven comedy.” I suppose the jokes are “surreal,” if you consider The Naked Gun “surreal.”
OK, so I guess the part where AJ’s dogs randomly turn into stuffed animals for some scenes is mildly surreal. But mostly, the gags are like the one where AJ and his future elbow-wrestling coach stand in the library perusing an old dusty tome together; when they leave, it is revealed that the book is not being held by the coach but by a pair of disembodied hands supplied by an extra crouching out of frame. This visual pun is unexpected, sure, but like 90% of AJ‘s jokes, it’s straight out of the Zucker-Abrams-Zucker playbook.
Not that that’s a bad thing. The jokes mostly didn’t land for me, but when you fire off 2 or 3 gags a minute, it’s inevitable that a few are going to get through. And this Fargo, North Dakota-based project, while cheaply done—it looks like an extended YouTube sketch, with uniformly amateur actors and self-consciously bad CGI/practical effects—is entirely earnest and refreshingly unafraid to fail. (AJ also takes a soupçon of spiritual inspiration from fellow Midwestern comedy indie Hundreds of Beavers, although it’s nowhere near as relentlessly original, witty, or—yes—as surreal as that cult hit.) AJ himself is a pleasantly bland slacker with no ill-will in his soul who just wants to walk his lapdogs and follow his daily routine, and it’s impossible to root against him. The plot, at least the first section, is brisk and easy to follow, with AJ tasked with completing a sequential set of challenges to wrest the Fargo mayoralty away from its arrogant, dog-unfriendly current occupant, helped along by the aforementioned elbow coach, a freshwater pirate, and a pair of turncoat civil servants. With regular surprises thrown into the mix, this makes for an easy and pleasant watch through the first 50 minutes or so. After (mild spoiler) AJ achieves his goal, however, the movie sort of continues on with far less direction, indulging a big flash forward as it segues into a sort of wistful reverie about losing track of its own plot that doesn’t entirely jibe with the movie’s first part—then ending with an apocalyptic finale with helicopter gunships fighting a D&D demon and his army of haunted skeletons that really doesn’t fit with the rest of the movie, but will at least wake you up. Well, maybe that last part does hit the “surreal” note they were bragging about…
Director Toby Jones must not be confused with the top-rank actor of the same name. This Toby Jones is a writer best known for his work on the Cartoon Network’s “The Regular Show.” This is actually the third (and most ambitious) “AJ” movie: the Jones/Thompson pair had made two shorter films (one was animated) starring the AJ character, and apparently have since they were teenagers in Fargo. Dog Park debuted as a “secret screening” mystery movie in some markets, where audiences felt ambushed by a way-off-center low-budget offering that many felt didn’t constitute a “real movie.” That unfortunate marketing ploy resulted in a barrage of angry 1-star IMDb ratings. AJ is probably not a movie meant for the big screen, but if you go into it knowing what to expect, there shouldn’t be anything here to offend your cinematic sensibilities. It’s juvenile, but not crude, like a live-action Bugs Bunny cartoon; something your inner 10-year old might enjoy. “Modest-but-zany” is the keyword here.
AJ Goes to the Dog Park can be streamed on multiple services (some free); there is also a Blu-ray with director’s commentary and other extras,
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
SATURDAY SHORT: LIGHT CAN’T ESCAPE (2024)
A renter comes to accept that she shares her unit with a miniature black hole.
CAPSULE: THE CARPENTER’S SON (2025)
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DIRECTED BY: Lotfy Nathan
FEATURING: Noah Jupe, Nicolas Cage, FKA Twigs, Isla Johnson
PLOT: A Jewish teenage boy, the son of a carpenter, is tempted by a Stranger to use his innate powers for evil.
COMMENTS: Mary and Jesus speak like they’re ordering high tea at the Goring hotel, Joseph raps in a California accent, the locals talk like Greeks pretending they’re Egyptians, and I swear one esteemed rabbi is Scottish. Inconsistent accents are not always a death knell for historical movies. There are numerous classics where the cast eschews their natural tongues to speak English (e.g. Schindler’s List), others where one or two characters can be forgiven for mangling a difficult accent (e.g. Braveheart), and even a few where they purposefully ignore proper dialects (e.g., The Death of Stalin). But those are movies whose greatness overcomes their anachronisms; when your movie isn’t great, or anywhere close to it, that kind of lack of attention to detail can become emblematic of what’s wrong with the work.
The Carpenter’s Son is a historical horror drama set during Jesus’ teenage years, an era the Gospels skipped over as too boring. It revolves as much, if not more, around Nicolas Cage’s carpenter than it does his moody teen son. Joseph (he’s never named Joseph in the film, despite the character being firmly public domain by now) narrates and struggles with doubts over whether his son is who his wife says he is, and, once it appears that the boy has magical powers, whether he’s a force for good or evil. In the meantime, he lays down strict rules for his stepson’s own good. No one is to know who they are while the trio is hiding out (for pseudo-Biblical reasons) in Egypt. Mary (i.e. “the mother”) does little of anything. “Jesus” (credited as “the boy”) acts like a typical teenager, basically a good egg, but taken to occasional impertinence and rebelliousness, and even a bit of peeping at his bathing neighbor. Oh, and he accidentally heals lepers when a playmate shoves him into them, so there’s that. And he has a real case to scream “you’re not my real Father!” at Nicolas Cage, but he mostly avoids that temptation. Plus, he fights demons!
But despite all this meaty material, the script provides no suspense or tension. Jesus’ temptation by Lucifer was already covered more profoundly and succinctly in both the Canonical Gospels and in a far greater film; this story is therefore not only predictable, but redundant. Satan’s initial attempts at seduction are pretty lame: she mostly tempts Jesus to use his powers for good, then gives him a peek at eternal damnation, which pretty much turns him off to the whole Universal Evil thing. The plan of acting kind of like a dick to get the messiah to abandon the world’s salvation doesn’t work out, but Satan will learn from this failure and give it a better shot in 15 years.
Cage monotones his way through his monologues, briefly erupting into periodic patented “Cage rage” rants to earn his paycheck before slipping back into a doze. As meek Mary, out-of-her-depths pop star FKA Twigs follows her screen hubby’s lead, looking lost most of the time while conserving her emotion for the one or two chances she gets to raise her voice. The two younger actors, Jupe and Johnson, fare better, but the script gives them so little to work with that they make only a slight impression. There are a few nifty if frustratingly brief visions of Hell and stuff near the end—if you can stay awake that long, and can make them out through the underlit and murky lensing.
The Carpenter’s Son was “inspired by” the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas. That narrative was a fascinating imagination of Jesus’ childhood, where the future savior acts like a bit of a brat, killing classmates for slights (don’t freak out, he later resurrects them) and performing odd rites like creating clay birds and bringing them to life. That script would make for a potentially great, wild movie. But The Carpenter’s Son is too reverential and chickens out from making that gonzo adaptation; what should be a bold provocation is instead an assemble-as-directed horror film, with a depressingly literal and violent good vs. evil showdown and only a surface-level examination of theology or the burden of messiahdom. Christians wary of a blasphemous Jesus horror film need not fear this mediocrity; worshipers at the altar of cinema, on the other hand, may call it sacrilege. Frankly, I’d rather get a splinter than watch The Carpenter’s Son again.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by “Sal U. Lloyd,” who said it was “Theologically unorthodox, with influences from Begotten and the African flashbacks in Boorman’s Exorcist Ii: The Heretic.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
SATURDAY SHORT: THE POND (2014)
A prince visits a pond to kiss a frog. He is a sweetie.