The Long Weekend – DVD Review

Film, Reviews

Available at Amazon.com.

Directed by
Pat Holden

Cast
Chris Klein ………. Cooper
Brendan Fehr ………. Ed Waxman
Chandra West ………. Kim
Craig Fairbrass ………. Frank Silver
Paul Campbell ………. Roger
Cobie Smulders ………. Ellen
Andy Thompson ………. Officer Garcia
Nicole McKay ………. Cathy

Running Time: 90 minutes
Rated R
DVD Release date: July 24, 2007

There are no films less enjoyable than bad comedies. As an audience, we can add our own humor to bad horror, bad sci-fi, bad melodramas and so on. When these genres fail, they can make us laugh.

But when a comedy fails, it keeps us from laughing. It is a humor event horizon from which no funny can escape. Were Joel, Tom Servo and Crow to watch bad comedies, MST3K would be 90 minutes of hearing puppets groan.

Nobody wants that thing.

Speaking of bad comedy, let’s talk about The Long Weekend. This film tells the story of the brothers Waxman, one an amoral sexual predator named Cooper, the other a miserable divorcee named Ed with a stifling addiction to pornography. Cooper is played by Chris Klein, best known as that dopey looking fella in Election and American Pie. Ed is portrayed by Brendan Fehr best known as that goofy looking fella from Roswell and CSI:Miami.

Anyway, It’s Ed’s birthday, he’s about to be fired, and he hasn’t had sex in a year. Ed makes it his mission to come up with an account that will win back his job, while Cooper makes it his mission to get his brother laid.

Comedy ensues.

Well, a rather pathetic simulacrum of comedy ensues. To rent this movie and expect actual comedy is akin to going to White Castle and expecting your slider to contain 1/2 pound of beef from the black Tajima-ushi breed of Wagyu cattle, raised according to strict tradition in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan.

In simpler terms, the movie isn’t very good.

My wife and I had to turn it off after only 20 minutes had passed. In those twenty minutes there were already two instances of women drinking semen and various video footage of animals humping one another. Trooper that I am, I forced myself to watch the rest of the picture after three days worth of detox. Things didn’t get better, but at least the movie is only 80 minutes long, not counting credits and gag reel.

Imagine a film made by a novice director, written by one of the writers of Doogal, and interspersed with the raunchiest clips from America’s Funniest Home Videos. Well, you don’t have to imagine, The Long Weekend exists. It is written by Ted Safran of Doogal, it is produced by Vin Di Bona of AFV and features said clips, and it is directed by no one in particular.

Oddly enough, in addition to the AFV clips, The Long Weekend also features How I Met Your Mother‘s Cobie Smulders. Couple this with the awfulness of the film itself, and it is enough to make the viewer long for the mediocre narration of Bob Saget.

But just because The Long Weekend isn’t my cup of tea, doesn’t mean that there isn’t somebody out there who’d like it. Sure it is predictable, and silly, and stupid, and offensive, and mean-spirited. But maybe, just maybe, there are people out there who have watched a movie and thought, “that needed a couple dozen shots of the differing penises of various mammals.” If so, then this film might be for them. Or perhaps these people just want for more poop jokes, and/or dick jokes and/or embarrassingly stupid innuendos and/or fatuous observations about the dating.

In conclusion, if you find the works of the Wayans and Larry the Cable Guy to be too highbrow, classy and/or uppity, then The Long Weekend is for you!

The DVD

Audio and Visual
The movie looks an sounds fine

The Extras
According to the back of the DVD box, FEATURES include:
16 x 9 widescreen presentation (not really a special feature)
5.1 and 2.0 Dolbyl audio (not really a special feature)
English closed caption (almost a special feature)
English subtitles (they found different words for the aforementioned closed captions)
Spanish subtitles

The disc also contains trailers for movies that nobody could ever possibly want to see.

The DVD Lounge’s Rating for The Long Weekend
CATEGORY
RATING
(OUT OF 10)
THE MOVIE

2
THE VIDEO

7
THE AUDIO

7
THE EXTRAS

1
REPLAY VALUE

1
OVERALL
3.5
(NOT AN AVERAGE)