spiderslash- Expect nothing, and even less.

One of my resolutions for the new year was to review more movies simply because I don’t think I do it as often as I should. I love film and to be quite honest with you, my film backlog is just as, if not bigger than my game backlog. I’ve always been awful about dedicating time to watch a movie and I have no idea why since they take much less dedication to sit down and enjoy than a video game. “But what movie should I watch?”, I wondered. There are so many wonderful pieces of cinema that I own and could enjoy and talk about.

“I dunno I’m on a POSTAL kick I guess, why not the POSTAL movie?”

POSTAL is a 2007 action/comedy film directed, produced, and co-written by German filmmaker Uwe Boll. Uwe Boll is a man, honestly much like the POSTAL itself, I was both familiar and unfamiliar with before this viewing. I knew full well that this man was considered one of the Worst Directors Of All Time but I’ve never actually seen any of his movies on my own. All I have ever seen from him are out-of-context clips and reviews for movies he had a hand in but from what I understand almost all of them are generally considered “Real Fucking Bad“. The dude made A LOT of video game movies but I never had a stake in them because they were never adaptions of things that I liked all that much, like Bloodrayne and Alone in the Dark. Since getting into POSTAL though, I finally had a real reason to check out one of his films and judge his work for myself.

So this movie is bad but, like, in a way that makes sense?

I’ve made it no secret that I very much enjoy POSTAL 2 but I will concede that it is not for everyone, especially the humor. POSTAL 2 really enjoys walking AND crossing the line of absurdity and tastelessness while keeping itself generally lighthearted. Does that mean I agree with the content in it? Oh god no, and honestly I’m probably desensitized to a lot of things, but POSTAL 2 never really got overly “uncomfortable” and “shocking” for me personally.

The POSTAL movie starts out with a plane crashing into the World Trade Center.

I was, no joke, WAY more shocked by the contents of the POSTAL movie than I ever was with POSTAL II. I was honestly expecting the Bush-era parody of Al-Qaeda since it was in POSTAL II and admittedly it was somehow…less bad? I think? Maybe it was just as bad, actually, I don’t know. But you know what I wasn’t expecting? The rampant ableism and excessive child murder. There is a terrorist member in this movie that only exists to make fun of the mentally handicapped and around the 50-minute mark kids just start getting shot in the chest and begin dropping like flies. POSTAL 2 did a lot of shit but it sure as hell didn’t kill KIDS FOR LAUGHS. I get that the movie is supposed to be a parody of itself, poking fun at violent media and all that but bro you can’t just put that in a wide-release movie and expect it to go over well.

Now, let’s brush aside the horrifically problematic elements of the movie for just a second. What is this film even about? Well it’s about some unnamed schmuck played by Zack Ward that’s down on his luck and trying to leave the garbage ass town he lives in, Paradise. He eventually gets together with his uncle Dave (Played by Dave Foley) and they both plan to steal a large amount of Krotchy dolls and sell them off because they’re hard to find. What they don’t know is that Al-Qaeda put vials of bird-flu in them and are planning to take out America itself. What follows is just fucking….nonsense. The movie has a basic structure and flows along, kind of, but pretty much all of it is absurd. It just moves from gross-out humor to bombastic violence to Verne Troyer (RIP) being thrown into a pit of monkeys and it’s insane. It’s crass, it’s offensive, it’s hard to watch….and it sure is POSTAL.

The POSTAL movie is one of the most faithful movie adaptations of a video game I have ever seen. Everything from the absurd humor to the random acts of violence just SCREAMS “POSTAL” to me, and I fucking hate that I’m saying that. While I think the movie goes WAY too far in a lot of areas, a lot of the situations the Dude finds himself in aren’t too out of place in an average POSTAL 2 mission. And I really hate to say this…but I did laugh a lot during this movie. There are many great, NON OFFENSIVE gags in this movie that got me just by their absurd nature alone. Many of the films jokes are helped by the admittedly great performances in this film, which is INSANE to say. Zack Ward, Dave Foley, Jackie Tohn, Verne Troyer, they all do great with what they’re given. They actually had me laughing and engaged with what was happening on screen for most of the runtime.

The fact that I’m going to be giving this movie a compliment of any kind means that my mother failed raising me.

I hate that I’m saying this, I really am, but the POSTAL movie is not even close to the worst thing I’ve seen. Yeah, it still sucks and it’s hard to watch but at least they…tried? Like it’s still POSTAL at its core and at least the cast looked like they had fun with it. Do I recommend it? Fuck no. This movie sucks ass and I never want to see it again. Just because it’s faithful doesn’t mean it’s GOOD. Some people have told me that this movie is Uwe Boll’s best work and I fucking SHUDDER to think what his other films must be like.

….Wait what do you mean Uwe Boll challenges movie critics to boxing matches? He doesn’t still do that, does he?

……Does he?