Strange Wilderness
Directed by Fred Wolf
Starring Steve Zahn, Justin Long, Jonah Hill, Allen Covert, Ashley Scott, Kevin Heffernan
Paramount/Happy Madison
Rated R
Release Date: May 20, 2008

After the death of his respected father, Peter Gaulke (Steve Zahn) took his place as the presenter on wildlife show “Strange Wilderness.” But what was once the cutting edge of naturalist programming is now a low budget laughing stock. After yet another poor show, fed up television executive Ed Lawson (Jeff Garlin) has warned Peter and his crew that he will cancel the programme in two weeks.

Luckily for them, an old friend promises to give Peter a map which details the whereabouts of Bigfoot, in the hope of boosting the show’s ratings and save it from the axe. A rag tag crew including stoned stand-in camera man Junior (Justin Long), voice-over script-writer and sound guy Fred Wolf (Allen Covert), and car mechanic hired as animal trainer Whitaker (Kevin Heffernan) set off for the rainforests of South America in an effort to save their TV show.

As a whole, this is a wasted opportunity. With so much comedic creativity involved, it’s frightening how weak this movie is. A very weak thread holds remnants of a story together, full of weak plot points and violently obvious dialogue, but nearly every strand is left unexplored and open ended, leaving you scratching your head at the point of any of it.

Wasted cameo appearances by Ernest Borgnine and Robert Patrick only add to the lists of what could have been: a cast as strong as this — Steve Zahn, Justin Long, Jonah Hill, Allen Covert, Kevin Heffernan — wasn’t enough to muster a good film with the material they were given.

For all its failings, this works best as a series of funny moments, which seems obvious when you figure that director Fred Wolf and co-writer Peter Gaulke (yes they did name characters after themselves) came from writing Saturday Night Live. Unfortunately, most of these ‘moments’ need to be a whole lot funnier than they are to make up for the lack of everything else. The ending is stunningly stupid. It felt as if they reached a point where they didn’t know what to do and just gave up. And this was the best way they could think of getting the characters home and ending the movie.

One minor plus point was the hilariously crap TV show, interspersed with the trek to the rainforest. Decades old footage passed off as their own, narrated by Steve Zahn’s pathetic voice-overs which usually start with a genuinely funny attempt at wildlife commentary but quickly drown in a sea of obscenities and occasionally, sex jokes.

If you really have to watch this movie though, Justin Long’s stoner Junior and Jonah Hill’s spaced-out Cooker are two very good reasons. Both were funny in every line delivery and every movement, really making the most of their time on screen, stealing every scene.

This is a movie which, on paper, had so much going for it. Sadly, it didn’t transfer to film.

DVD Bonus Features

A behind the scenes featurette for Comedy Central: Presenter Lisa Arch does her best to remain polite about the film when asking the questions, but interviews with Justin Long, Steve Zahn, Allen Covert, and Peter Dante show that not even the cast know what the film is about. Most of it is filmed on location with nearly every interview filmed with a wild animal behind them. The most fun being the slightly nervous banter between Covert and Dante who seem to bounce off each other in trying to liven up a dull interview filmed with a tiger being tended to in the background.

The second featurette is all about the infamous Turkey scene: open-mouthed Turkey. Steve Zahn. Trousers around ankles. No, I don’t need to say any more.

Another behind the scenes extra includes some outtakes from the ‘what do we do’ scene which contains some very funny lines, mostly courtesy of Jonah Hill. Although he and Justin Long seem to feel the need to restrain themselves when it comes to filthy outbursts whilst in the company of Ernest Borgnine.

‘Cooker’s Song’ shows Jonah Hill performing an extended version of the acoustic, hilarious, and obscene anti-ode to his dad and his new step-family.

In the deleted scenes, it once again falls to Jonah Hill and Justin Long to provide a reason to watch this. Any scene with them is funny, especially when Justin Long reveals his tattooed fake boobs. A deleted scene involving immigration officials offers the only chance to see any reason Ashley Scott’s character Cheryl was in the movie. Which, through no reason I can fathom (it’s funny and shows Cheryl actually doing something other than just being eye-candy), was cut out of the movie. An extended version of the interview scene shows how little attention was paid to this, a scene which called for the use of lots of different characters and was ripe for comedy.