SLC Punk

Bomb Rating: 

I say, cover my testicles in goat's blood, throw a rabid badger in my underwear, and let me wait in the lobby.

I'd say that, of the hundreds of films that have had characters talking to the audience, about 99% of them have sucked so badly that hordes of previously illiterate audience members have stampeded from the theater chanting "dramatize the story! dramatize the story!" threatening to burn down the theater if something wasn't done immediately.

Stevo (Matthew Lillard) is the one who talks to the audience in "SLC Punk," a story about being a punk in Salt Lake City during the 1980s. And really, who better than the ever-engaging and charming Lillard to narrate an entire movie for us? I say, cover my testicles in goat's blood, throw a rabid badger in my underwear, and let me wait in the lobby.

I know this film stank because it wasn't all that long ago that I saw it, yet I'm having trouble recalling anything about it already. I remember that Stevo had blue hair, which made him a rebel, I guess. His friend, Heroin Bob (Michael A. Goorjian), was the ultimate in punk irony because he never did any drugs. Mostly they went around to different parties.

The cute contrast of punks in Salt Lake City that is supposed to give the movie its hook wears off in approximately ten seconds once you realize the director, James Merendino, is a lot more impressed by this problem than the rest of us are. This movie is more like an extended stoner story in which the only people even remotely interested in what happened are the people who were there. The rest of us just sit around wishing it had taken them five minutes to realize what dumb wastoids they were, instead of so long that spinning in circles is somehow passed off as drama.

To spread the word about this SLC Punk review on Twitter.