I have been waiting for this for easily a year and a half now, and I am so ready for Luke and Andrew's premiere directing piece...Who else is as pumped for this as I am? Any idea if it has influences from Wes Anderson? Or is it more a Frat Pack movie? Either way I'm stoked for the release!
Sorry to let you down, but this movie is god awful. I saw it like two years ago at sxsw and I was really really excited cause of the cast and whatnot, but I was completely let down by a terrible movie. there's a reason wes directed bottle rocket and not luke or owen, and its made painfully obvious with wendell baker. very few funny parts, terrible acting, terrible script, terrible everything. not wes anderson-ish, not frat pack-ish, just crap.
The acting from Luke and Owen is outstanding. Luke plays really quite an interesting deviation from his usual self in the first part of the film, and Owen as usual can do no wrong (interesting to see him play a bastard for once though).
Almost all the humor came from a performance standpoint. There really is some very funny comic acting. However, the film nearly falls apart in several places where it appears to pander to 'gross out' humor for no apparent reason whatsoever.
There are a couple of moments where the direction is quite weak - for example a flashback that is poorly transitioned to, so we are not sure if it is a flashback or not until it is over. Also I seem to remember several stretches of the film where there were a puzzling amount of close ups, which kind of detract from the actor's body performance and the humor that can bring. Despite these technical flaws, the film does however LOOK quite good - definitely better than a frat pack film as there is some nice cinematography.
The editing is fairly inconsistent and there are several places where it was clear that cuts didn't quite match up.
Aside from these points, it's good. Gets a 6 or 7 from me.