Hot Rod

Hot Rod is a bizarre little comedy from the Lonely Island comedy group made while they were still putting out music videos through Saturday Night Live. It's produced by Lorne Michaels but it's not the  usual SNL-to-the-cinema formula of taking a shtick, adding a formulaic story, and running a the bit to the ground. Fortunately Lonely Island didn't have a single well-known character or recurring bit, so instead of getting a skit stretched to movie length and forced into a three-act structure, they wrote an original story and characters for their movie.
 Well, no, not exactly. They took a script (written by South Park's Pam Brady) that was originally slated to star Will Ferrell and did some heavy rewrites to make it fit their style better.

 It's... not a great comedy, but it's weird and surrealist and reflects their sensibilities and where they were at the time. And most importantly, it is pretty funny a lot of the time.

 Andy Samberg plays Rod Kimble, a self-designated stuntman still living with his family in American suburbia. His little brother (troupemate Jorma Taccone - Akiva Schaffer's on the director's seat) idolizes him, and he has a combative relationship with his stepfather. As in, he has to win in ritual combat against his dad to earn his respect (so far he hasn't managed to land a single blow.)

 He struts around town like he owns the place, the same way Emperor Norton must have in LA, always in his stuntman jumpsuit with a little cape. And with a similar amount of delusions. Rod, despite having a team behind him (his little brother and two others played by Danny McBride and Bill Hader) is just no good at what he does - his little moped can barely gain enough speed to mount a ramp, never mind jump off it.

 He's a likeable doofus, though; all intensity, self-absorption and childlike focus.

 Soon two complications enter his life. One is a love interest played by Isla Fisher (who unfortunately is just there to look adorable and let others' zaniness bounce off her.) The other is that his stepdad has a terminal disease and needs $50000 for the operation. Rod of course vows to raise the money so he can save his stepfather, so he can later beat the shit out of him.

 He and his team (which Denise, his crush, soon joins) set out to scrounge enough money through independent stuntwork so they can set up a jump over fifteen school buses, a stunt they're sure will help them gather the money somehow.

 It goes pretty much as you'd expect. It's a (purposefully) very dumb movie with a weirdly deadpan tone that makes its non-sequiturs and digressions all the funnier. Like - when life gets to be too much, Rod goes to the mountains and spends a few minutes angry-dancing to Moving Picture's Never while drinking and smoking at the same time (and then spends a similar amount of time falling down the mountainside.) Or an inspirational scene set to John Farnham's You're The Voice, full of triumphant slow walking and crowds gathering to back our heroes until things somehow devolve into chaos and rioting.

 The plot is not important, is what I'm saying. It's all in the specifics, asides, and character moments. A lot of it doesn't work, but I suspect just what it is that doesn't work most of its defenders would disagree about.

 
 It looks a bit drab, but then again you wouldn't really expect much visually out of an SNL-adjacent production. The music is a fine selection of '80s cheese, with  emphasis on hair metal. I have to respect a movie that has a bunch of Europe songs but not The Final Countdown. I kind of think that might even be a minor joke, maybe. It's that sort of movie.

 And it's got a killer roster of talent: Besides Rod and his crew there's Ian McShane, Sissy Spacek, Will Arnett, Chris Parnell... a lot of funny people, left to do their thing. You just know scenes were being rewritten until the very last moment as people kept coming up with ideas for their characters. It's chaotic and very uneven, but well, that's kind of its charm.