4.8

Broken Lizard Aims for Monty Python and Misses the Mark with Quasi

By Jesse Hassenger  |  April 20, 2023 | 10:15am
Movies Reviews Broken Lizard
Broken Lizard Aims for Monty Python and Misses the Mark with Quasi
Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste

For much of their delightfully unlikely movie career, the comedy troupe Broken Lizard has attempted to put some sparkle back into the word “sophomoric.” The group first met in college, and their humor, as seen in movies like Super Troopers and Beerfest, is infused with a certain genial frattiness – but the type of frat guys who squeak through an English major and might have, in the pre-improv days, tried out for some plays. (Maybe their frat is even considered a “literary society”? But, no, the Lizards were Beta Theta Pi members.) Their new movie Quasi seems like the perfect extension of a fun sophomore year, loosely adapting Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame into a Monty Python-esque travesty of 15th century France.

But if this most ambitious Broken Lizard production (past films were set in beer halls, anonymous strips of highway, or a single restaurant), presumably afforded by their home studio Searchlight’s pivot to producing #content for Hulu, bears a superficial resemblance to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, it bears a closer and less fortunate resemblance to lower-tier Adam Sandler vehicles. Quasi (Steve Lemme) is a lovable hunchbacked underdog with a Little Nicky twist to his face, and the movie around him has the miss-and-hit first-draft energy of Sandler’s inexplicable dream project The Ridiculous 6. It’s more likable than Sandler at his worst, much less funny than Sandler at his best, and nowhere near anything the Python group did together. (Well, maybe Jabberwocky, with which it shares some blood-splatter gags.) Broken Lizard fans will know not to expect Super Troopers, but it’s not exactly The Slammin’ Salmon, either.

The movie’s reconfigured Quasimodo story doesn’t have much to do with Hugo’s original text. (Put it this way: Disney animated a more faithful adaptation.) The group (collectively credited as the screenwriter) makes the peculiar choice to recast Quasi as a professional torture engineer, slaving away to fine-tune devices for the ungrateful King of France (Jay Chandrasekhar), alongside his coworker and housemate Duchamp (Kevin Heffernan) – who both men note, in a funny running gag turned actual thematic touchpoint, is not Quasi’s best friend. Nonetheless, Duchamp becomes accidentally responsible for Quasi winning an audience with the visiting Pope Cornelius (Paul Soter). This puts Quasi in a bind when the king assigns the hunchback to murder the pope, while the pope attempts to task him with assassinating the king. Quasi also finds time to fall in love with the about-to-be-coronated Queen Catherine (Adrianne Palicki).

The royal/papal rivalry has some crudely quasi-satirical tartness; it’s one of the few moments where Broken Lizard seems to really revel in their anachronisms, reducing two men of enormous power to petty colloquial squabbles. The rest of the time, the contemporary commentary in the mouths of period characters is pretty half-assed; it’s mostly Quasi and his pals saying “dude” and some swear words a lot, an okay start that never builds to something more inspired.

It may be that a production as (relatively) elaborate as Quasi simply bumps up against the troupe’s main limitation, which in other productions has doubled as its strength: Their everyman teamwork that never shoves one particular member to the foreground as the designated star. This means that Kevin Heffernan, who also directs Quasi, can play the boorish Farva in Super Troopers, a more sweet-natured character in Club Dread, and the conflicted Duchamp in Quasi, as well as a more directly villainous role. Everyone in the troupe is double-cast here, and while this is sometimes technically impressive – I did not immediately recognize Paul Soter playing the pope – it doesn’t always give each member enough room to establish clear comic personalities. (I consider myself a fan, and I’m only just working out which one is Paul Soter and which one is Erik Stolhanske.)

All five of them are circling a void in the film’s writing: What’s this movie’s take on Quasi, anyway? He’s kind of a nice guy, but not so nice that he thinks twice about participating in torture; he’s kind of down on himself, but he doesn’t have much trouble accepting the love of Queen Catherine. There just isn’t much of a comic conceit to this story, placing too much burden on the movie’s non sequiturs, like another runner-turned-plot-point about the deliciousness of oysters. There are plenty of little chuckles throughout, but the movie doesn’t incorporate seemingly throwaway gags into its narrative like an expertly timed Harold-style improv. More often, it feels like the Broken Lizard boys are trying to salvage what works and re-use as much of it as possible. There may be a little bit of accidental self-confession along the way: Another running gag has Lemme playing an ill-fated jester who keeps failing to amuse his audience.

Director: Kevin Heffernan
Writer: Broken Lizard
Starring: Steve Lemme, Kevin Heffernan, Paul Soter, Jay Chandrasekhar, Erik Stolhanske, Adrianne Palicki
Release Date: April 20, 2023 (Hulu)

Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including Polygon, Inside Hook, Vulture, and SportsAlcohol.com, where he also has a podcast. Following @rockmarooned on Twitter is a great way to find out about what he’s watching or listening to, and which terrifying flavor of Mountain Dew he has most recently consumed.

 
Join the discussion...