This inspired bit of lunacy, from
the creators of Napoleon Dynamite, is an instant cult classic, spoofing
home-schooled kids, Mormon uber geeks, Star Trek fanatics, crossing-dressing
divas and the question of original authorship.
The soul of the piece is aspiring sci-fi
author Benjamin (Michael Angarano) whose wacky futuristic novel Yeast Lords
gets ripped off by competing kitsch masters: first his fantasy author idol, the
self-enamored Ronald Chevalier (Jemaine Clements gives a fussy performance not
seen since Mel Brook’s original vision for Springtime for Hitler), passes
it off as his next bestseller; and then a putative girlfriend (Halley Feifer)
buys an option for an Ed Wood worthy local filmmaker (Hector Jimenez) with a
post dated check.
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Stuck penniless in a geodesic dome
like Hobbit house with his nightgown designing, yeast baking mom (Jennifer
Coolidge concocts a smothering, bordering on incestuous, quasi-bi-polar mom
that is just a notch short of unbearable), Benjamin soon acquires a queer
guardian angel (Mike White) to help regain his twice pilfered work, in the
process sending up squeaky clean, if clueless boy heroes as well as the
previously unexplored romantic possibilities of that hoary cinema cliché,
projectile vomit.
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Director/co-writer Jared Hess
(collaborating with wife, Jerusha) provides cockeyed glimpses of what the
plagiarists seek to do with Benjamin’s surreal creatures – including a rocket
firing, flying deer drone – along with the kid’s own unique images. Powered by
the fey butch energy of White’s angel, Gentlemen Broncos would probably
succumb to its centrifugal artistic inspirations if not for the oddly old soul
sweetness and sure fire comic timing of its boyish lead. Angarano diffuses his
Teddy Bear cuteness by playing the most preposterous moments with the resolute
sincerity of the very old fashioned dramatic and cultural values the film may
appear to mock. Hess’ world is a kind of bordering on tranny utopia where
warrior heroes wake up on a sterile lab table to find their balls literally
pickled in a jar while the audience is seduced into rooting for an almost
pre-sexual man/child hero – unveiling a highly eroticized world that is
cleansed of normal sexual paranoia and anxieties.