[yasr_overall_rating]
Cracker County is under attack and lovesick dog catcher Bubba Blanche has been transformed into a ferocious, cigar smoking Werewolf in order to save the day. But first he’s got to conquer a beer or two. And maybe a plate of chicken wings.
I thought I would hate “Bubba The Redneck Werewolf” much more than I did. At initial glimpse of the title, I thought it would be another stab at a comedic sendup of rednecks. While I liked Larry the Cable Guy and Jeff Foxworthy fifteen years ago, this type of humor has now spread very thin. Based on a comic appearance that occurred at roughly the same time Larry the Cable Guy did, Bubba is very much a part of the let’s make fun of rednecks style of humor. The film does not stop at making fun of rednecks, though, and has some genuine comedic moments that I appreciated.
The film’s characters are clearly superficial and derived from the pages of a comic book and many of them exist only as vehicles to deliver the jokes of the film, a good amount of which land properly.
The plot is a bit like “The Devil Goes Down to Georgia” without a violin. The loveable loser and dog catcher Bubba (Fred Lass) is turned by the devil (Mitch Hyman, who also created the Bubba character) into a werewolf and races off to figure out how to change back. Bubba is in love with Bobby Jo (Malone Thomas) who has left Bubba for a guy with a better trailer. One of the funniest moments in the film involves a scene where the rednecks shoot at what the rednecks believe to be zombies. When the rednecks discover that the zombies are in fact college students, they proceed to continue shooting. The film escalates to a drinking contest between Bubba and the devil rather than a violin duel.
I’d like to digress on an important note for a moment. Humorously, Bubba has a character named “Testicle Man.” The film also makes several jokes about losing one’s testicles and goes so far as to state that having both testicles makes one a “man.” This joke is simply not earned by the film. It’s humor that’s cruel and dishonest.
I wasn’t offended by the rest of the film so much as overcome by its humor. The jokes work in such a way as to not culminate towards a greater point or develop character, but much of the humor is wacky and offbeat in a way that makes things engaging even if the plot here is cardboard thin.
By admitting to being offended by some of the stuff in this movie, I’ve been beaten by the film. By liking the funny stuff, I’ve been beaten by the film again. I just really wish some of the insensitive testicle humor had been left on the cutting room floor, in which case I would have easily scored Bubba one star higher. The film’s director Brendan Jackson Rogers has made some other very humorous looking shorts that spoof commercial properties like “House of Cards,” “Indiana Jones,” and “The Hobbit.” The film’s writer Stephen Brio has gone on to write two films in the “American Guinea Pig” series, which if these are rip-offs of the “Guinea Pig” series that Charlie Sheen once saw at a party and mistook for a snuff film, I would be more than interested in watching.
Available on DVD January 17th, 2017
