National Lampoon’s Pucked

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: D     Feature: D

 

 

Arthur Hiller can direct comedy and is one of the true gentlemen journeyman directors, who gave us films like Silver Streak, but nothing he can do in any way, shape or form to make National Lampoon’s Pucked (2006) work and the combination of a four-writer screenplay and non-actor Jon Bon Jovi as the lead are just too much idiocy to overcome.

 

Playing a lawyer named Frank in a script that could rival one of his songs for the amount of clichés squeezed in, he decides to go into big debt starting an all-female hockey team.  When all is said and done, every older critic in the country owes Ryan O’Neal an apology for bashing So Fine so hard.

 

Estella Warren, Curtis Armstrong, Nora Dunn, Cary Elwes and even David Faustino are gravely wasted in this amazing mess where everyone but the ever-oblivious Bon Jovi looks bored since he is playing himself.  We will not go for the obvious jokes, since this turkey beat us to... ugh!

 

Anyhow, what used to be cutting edge in gross and/or sex humor is so lame that the National Lampoon name is selling, but is (hopefully will) soon become a reason to avoid what is going right to DVD or released theatrically for no good or profitable reason.  The reaction every time this comes up with anyone we speak with is “they [National Lampoon] put out another movie?”  Get Paul Newman in Slapshot instead.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is a bit soft and detail challenged throughout, without any memorable shots or anything else worth seeing, while the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix has the same lack of sonic imagination as a Bon Jovi album.  Even the extras are stupid.  One is a nearly six-minute piece on an old pervert from this mess, while the other is a very desperate four-minute thought police lesbianism piece that sums up the bankruptcy of the whole disc.

 

Can these National Lampoon releases get any worse?  Maybe.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo