Yoga Hosers (2016)

Grow Up! You are too old to be making naughty teener movies. Maybe there is something to pot affecting your brain, because you had groundbreaking classics in Dogma and Chasing Amy, but this garbage is worse than the indie junk produced by high school kids.

Fmovies: Yoga Hosers is to film what dirty outdoor bum f***ing is to hygiene. To say this film is an insult to bratwurst, yoga, beavers, French Canadians, demon worship, Jean Chretien and the province of Manitoba would be an understatement comparable to calling the Hindenburg a bad day in New Jersey. Years ago, someone must have approached director Kevin Smith with a Brewster's Millions (1985)-type proposition only instead of wasting money he's trying to get his fans to die of embarrassment en mass. The man has constructed a personal brand that embodies and cashes in on the aloof, dropout, knower-of-all, master-of-none, slacker quintessence that made Comic- Book Guy from the Simpsons (1989-Present) such a fan favorite. Then like a common drug dealer, the man sold his brand to damaged people, made a tidy profit and probably sits in a cozy man-cave of obsolescence cluttered with Batman memorabilia, laughing as the good s**t he used to sling is being cut with baking soda.

The thing in Yoga Hosers that loosely resembles a plot, revolves around best friends Colleen (Lily-Rose Depp) and Colleen (Smith). They kinda-sorta have a band, kinda-sorta have family lives and kinda- sorta work at a convenience store called the Ah-2-Zed because...Canada. Their existence as terminally flighty, yoga-loving, teenage girls is completely upended when a dark presence threatens to...you know what, I can't. I really can't. Going over the plot in my head and attempting to regurgitate it like a half-eaten poutine is giving me an embolism. Let's just say going over the story beat by beat, would have the same effect on you the reader as the Ark of the Covenant.

This movie makes no sense. It doesn't make sense from a narrative perspective, it doesn't make sense from a character perspective, it don't make sense from a marketing perspective or really any perspective that requires you to, you know, have eyes, ears and a sense of self. Smith is clearly gunning for the apparently coveted "so-bad-it's- good" slot of your film-going memory that I'm surprised he didn't include a tobacco spitting talking cupcake. And no, Smith himself playing the army of Nazi sausages that are unceremoniously dismembered throughout the film, does not make me feel better about it.

The thing about Smith's more than half-over True North trilogy is it throws itself into the realm of badness and asks you to love it, like a fussy, crap-covered toddler who tipped over its training potty. It tries oh so hard to be the next The Room (2003) completely ignoring the fact that not even The Room wanted to be The Room! To accomplish this, the movie hobnobs every tired lounge-club comedian stereotype of entitled Millenials and polite Canadians and mingles them with Nazi scientist clichés, tacky monster effects, View Askew cameos and the jokes your dad laughed at in Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993).

And another thing while we're on the subject of living, breathing examples of eye-rolling lethargy. Kevin Smith can't write; there I said it. Sure he has a penchant for snappy dialogue but there's way more to good writing than characters spewing lines with the cadence of a drumline. Good writing needs character arcs, themes, foreshadowing, mood, structure, all the stuff that doesn't lend itself to a Clerks (1994) callback. Smith sacrifices all that in this film so he can feel a sense of accomplishment, being a 47-year-old man writing two fourteen-year-old's like they're out of a Diablo Cody story. That

Would have worked better as a "Grindhouse" type film. I can tell this was supposed to be comedy, but almost every joke fell flat. There were only minor amusing moments, but they were so scattered across the run time that your search for them would not even be worth it.

I wish Kevin Smith wouldn't do all the science fiction elements, because they don't blend well with the established tone. And It makes everything more ridiculous to be honest. I would have enjoyed a more down to Earth comedy. If you wanna keep the weird monsters and over the top scientists, then set the tone up better from the start. Because the first act is like a cheap Rom- com. It just takes you by surprise when it switches gears. I don't have anything against the Avantgarde genre, but here it just didn't work well.

What are the positives? There's an entertaining flashback scene with Haley Joel Osment. He is completely over acting and it's one of the few scenes which could be funny to some people. Johnny Depp shows up, and his ex-wife and two of his kids (one is playing the lead) as well. Even Kevin Smith's daughter co-stars. So, this is a family film? Maybe it is nice to see these two families be friends and make a funny movie together. You can see they all had fun and they are not taking it seriously for one second.

It feels like the Depp's and the Smith's were just hanging out for a weekend and just for the fun of it decided to make a movie. They invited a few friends too. I guess it's all an in-joke to them, but for the rest of the world? Not so much.

Yoga Hosers fmovies. Kevin Smith definitely didn't shoot for the moon, or aim to make this for everyone, or even most...he made this for his fans from the Podcast, and to give his daughter an avenue to stretch her new found skills.

The movie is fun. the performances in it all shine at different moments...the two standouts being Johnny Depp as Guy Lapointe and Tony Hale as Lily-Rose Depp's Dad...Solid and funny.

The girls grew on me after awhile...which was surprising, only to the fact that watching teen girls on their phones and chatting back and forth...in real life can be annoying...But Smith makes it funny, and paced well.

Overall...if the preview intrigues you...see it.

If not...it's OK to skip...it's not for you.

I love Kevin Smith. Seriously think he's one of the most engaging, funny, clever people going around. I've been a regular at his Smodcasts, live shows, q&a's, watched all his movies, twitter feed etc etc, so it pains me to say that this is one of the biggest pieces of sh!t I have ever seen. An in joke wankfeast from start to finish, I gave it 2 stars rather than one only to honour the memory of his early funny films and what an all round good dude he seems to be in general. It's great that Kev has the money to do whatever and indulge whoever the f@ck he wants, I'd love to have that life too. But I don't, so I had to put up with wasting 90 minutes of my life being smacked around by the snotty end of Big Kev's fuckstick. The most entertaining part was Ralph Gorman doing his Hollywood BabbleOn schtick without having to do call outs to drunken white trash from the third world suburbs of bumfuck Idaho. When Kevin announced his retirement from movies I was disappointed, but after this unfunny self indulgent Wankapalooza, I'd rather he stuck to the talk circuit where he's still awesome as hell.

Yoga Hosers (2016)

* (out of 4)

Friends Colleen (Lily-Rose Depp) and Colleen (Harley Quinn Smith) are invited to a Senior party but they end up having to work at the local convenient store. They invite the boys back to the store for a party by they're attacked by some Nazi sausages.

Yes, writer/director Kevin Smith has followed the ultra-bizarre TUSK up with an even stranger movie that isn't nearly as creative. You know, I got the great opportunity to see Smith in person during one of his "conversations" and he's a terrific and fun guy. I mean, you gotta admire the man for what he has accomplished in his career and during the chat he talked about people questioning him and that he will do the type of films that he wants. I really, truly and 100% respect that and I admire any filmmaker who wants to take chances and do weird things.

With that said, just because I respect the filmmaker doesn't mean that I'm going to enjoy the picture. Sadly, YOGA HOSERS is a really awful movie that doesn't work on any level outside of being weird, strange and in all reality original. Yes, Nazi sausages are on display here and you've got to at least admit that you've never seen that before. The problem is that Smith's screenplay is just weird and for a comedy it's never funny. That's the most shocking thing to me because Smith is one of the best dialogue writers out there yet this film just seems flat and lifeless.

I don't know if the point of this film is to give his daughter and Depp's daughter a film to go and if perhaps Daddy Smith and Daddy Depp are just here having some goofy fun. Perhaps that's the case but you still have to have some sort of laughs. At just 89-mintues the film is rather short but it drags on to the point where around the twenty-minute mark I was already looking at my clock. I will say that the two leads are actually good together and have a nice chemistry, which just makes you wish even more that they had something better to work with. Johnny Depp returns to his role from TUSK and adds to the weirdness.

YOGA HOSERS is just another flat out weird movie but sadly this one here isn't nearly as effective as TUSK. With the lack of laughs this movie is pretty much dead in the water, which is really too bad.