So this was the highest-grossing homegrown comedic Canadian movie bacon in years? Either the Canadians are desperate for comedy, not being too nit-picky about its quality, or the TV series is much better hence the success at home soil.
TPB looks like a sitcom, and something tells me that the TV series might be considerably better. The movie starts off fairly well, but ends up with the perennial big-screen disease that seems to afflict the majority of big-budget North American comedies: the movie runs out of gags and ideas halfway through, leaving the viewer with a second half that is almost fast-forward-worthy: absolutely nothing funny or even amusing happens there. The cats end up being the sole entertainers from the half-way point onwards. The best stuff (what relatively little there was of it) came during the prison segments, which were too short. There was much potential to be squeezed out of the jail setting, especially considering that I can't recall ever seeing a proper prison comedy. The makers of TPB also broke a cardinal rule - an absolute no-no - when it comes to goofy comedies: do NOT try to get the audiences to take your cardboard characters seriously. This, for example, happened also with "Kingpin", which started off very well but disintegrated because the director thought that Woody and co. should be accepted dramatically as well!
My advice to makers of comedies - baconic or otherwise: stick to the gags, forget the mushy baloney, and if you run out of ideas, DON'T COMPLETE THE MOVIE until you get your script to the point when it's as tight as Demi Moore's silicone breasts. Someone was in a rush here to get the movie into the cinemas under the set deadline, hence the script's evident mediocrity.
The guy who plays Julian looks like a cross between Tom Savini and tennis pro Nenad Zimonjic...
TPB looks like a sitcom, and something tells me that the TV series might be considerably better. The movie starts off fairly well, but ends up with the perennial big-screen disease that seems to afflict the majority of big-budget North American comedies: the movie runs out of gags and ideas halfway through, leaving the viewer with a second half that is almost fast-forward-worthy: absolutely nothing funny or even amusing happens there. The cats end up being the sole entertainers from the half-way point onwards. The best stuff (what relatively little there was of it) came during the prison segments, which were too short. There was much potential to be squeezed out of the jail setting, especially considering that I can't recall ever seeing a proper prison comedy. The makers of TPB also broke a cardinal rule - an absolute no-no - when it comes to goofy comedies: do NOT try to get the audiences to take your cardboard characters seriously. This, for example, happened also with "Kingpin", which started off very well but disintegrated because the director thought that Woody and co. should be accepted dramatically as well!
My advice to makers of comedies - baconic or otherwise: stick to the gags, forget the mushy baloney, and if you run out of ideas, DON'T COMPLETE THE MOVIE until you get your script to the point when it's as tight as Demi Moore's silicone breasts. Someone was in a rush here to get the movie into the cinemas under the set deadline, hence the script's evident mediocrity.
The guy who plays Julian looks like a cross between Tom Savini and tennis pro Nenad Zimonjic...