I was flabbergasted to learn via the opening credits that it took nine people to write “Fart….The Movie”. Surely it doesn’t require that many people to write such a low-brow film. It’s frowned upon to go into a film with pre-determined notions, but can you blame me for expecting the worst out of a film with this in the title? When you call your film “Fart”, you’re not expecting much out of your audience. You should also expect heavy criticism before the screening starts.
After I got comfortable with “Fart” (as comfortable as I could get), I realized why it took nine writers to pen the screenplay. This is a variety movie ala “The Kentucky Fried Movie” and “American Raspberry” (for pun’s sake, the latter especially). It makes sense that a large number of writers would be assembled, as each one would write their own sketch. That doesn’t excuse their poor output, but it at least solves the confusion.
It’s not that I was expecting much from this movie. As I already mentioned, I went in expecting the worst. And I guess I could say I didn’t receive that, considering I laughed a few times. What I was expecting was some type of creativity. It’s clear from the tagline, “The movie they said could never be made!”, that Ray Etheridge is setting the bar low and possibly going to poke fun at the Hollywood system.
“Fart” does start out that way. Well, once you get past the overdrawn opening where Russell (Joel Weiss) walks around town farting on everybody. Once he arrives home to his loving wife, Heather (Shannandoah Sorin), it actually seems as if this is going to be a spoof of marital dramas. Just replace any marital spat with farting. I’m not saying this could’ve sustained itself for ninety minutes, but there’s potential.
Instead, Heather tires of her husband’s farting addiction and love of television and goes to a New Year’s Eve party alone (to the delight of everybody there). Russell stays home and watches television, starting with regular programming (we get clips of “The Three Stooges”, in case you wanted to see actual comedy), then switching over to fart centric segments. I’m still unsure if this was all in Russell’s mind via a drunken stupor. Not that it really matters.
We get everything from infomercials to soap operas to game shows. I recall laughing during one of them, but the skit escapes me. I believe it was the one with the support group for those suffering from fart addiction, but the flatulence related puns sour me on that idea. Truth be told, the only joke that really made me laugh happened during the wraparound. That would be when Russell lets a big one rip at home and he actually has a seismograph to record the impact of his farts. Whomever wrote that gag deserves a pat on the back.
Back to the lousy skits. The worst ones would be the ones that drag on for too long, such as both game show parodies. The first is called “Who Cut the Cheese?”, where contestants have to answer fart-related questions by, you guessed it, farting in. It ends with one of the contestants shitting their pants. The other is a spoof of the “Gong Show” called “Bong Show”. It’s the same basic premise, except this time everything is fart related. Do you see where this would be repetitive?
The soap opera bit would be better described as an afternoon special. It has two roommates discussing why the one is going through relationship issues. It turns out he’s addicted to farting, despite never doing it in his roommate’s presence. I wonder if this is speaking to anybody in the film. Anyway, there’s also an infomercial for an air freshener that sprays farts to make you feel at home. Then there’s the obvious televangelist parody where a preacher bemoans farting as satanic.
There’s other skits, but I’m growing tired of talking about this film. While I didn’t expect much from “Fart”, I expected better than this. There is some clever writing here (from whom I’m not sure), but most of it is crude fart gags. At least play up the marital problem or even get more creative and have Russell used as a weapon in the army. Heather herself makes that remark at one point. Why not go with that instead of this piss poor sketch comedy?
Final Rating: D-