Swiss Army Man

Swiss Army Man (2016)

Rate: 😎😎😎

Production: 

Genre: Drama/Dark Comedy

Rating: M

Now my first real annoyance with this film was that Hank got hold of the corpse's phone but doesn't wait until climbing the hill. The phone was charged at 10% or so which is enough to give anyone a heart attack, especially when you are stranded on an island! So it should have been obvious to him to take the phone of Bluetooth straight away! That eats up soooooo much battery life. Shaking my head. 

Anyways, the corpse is played by none other than Daniel Radcliffe, who's only dialogue is a series of uncomfortably coordinated farts for the first part of the film.

 UGH! But it got really awkward when Hank drinks water from the slowly decomposing body. Eventually you come to learn that the body is decomposing way too slowly, at a rate that his consciousness and ability to talk has not kept up with his decaying body.... so yes, the dude comes back to life - sort of.

You later discovery the undead has a name, Manny. 

There were some cringey lines that aimed to make some deep or thought-provoking comment on the current state of society yet 9 times out of 10, seemed to barely touch the surface on anything meaningful. Some ideas had about as much depth as those Teen <3 Quotes Facebook pages that we were all probably guilty of liking at some point. Making implications like it being a bad thing that people don't sing to each other when they catch the bus to work but whatever, to each their own I guess. 

Here's an direct example of what I'm talking about:

"If my best friend keeps his farts from me... what else is he hiding?"

Overall, some scenes seemed to drag out a bit too long. This was hard to watch at some points, because you never knew if a scene was going to be either really cringey or really good and heart-warming. 

One thing I will say, the performances were beyond brilliant. Daniel Radcliffe has really proven himself as more than just a child actor. Swiss Army Man was Radcliffe's very own Elephant Man and he did it remarkably well. 

It stuck very true to the style and just screams Dark Comedy + Feel-Good Movie fairly well. There were a lot of wholesome bonding between the two best friends. Some Manny scenes were really disgusting and gross, though I guess that is all part of the message of the story which is in the root of human nature, that we as humans are actually all pretty disgusting if you think about it.

However, no regrets, glad I bothered to finally come round to watching this. Not bad. Even if it meant grudgingly staring at this on my screen for too many seconds as the multi-purpose dude returns from whence he came.