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When it comes to the DIY ethos, it's generally accepted that Do It Yourself often means Do It Poorly. Punk rockers are seldom great musicians, but that has always been part of the appeal. We not only understood that they probably didn't even know all the major chords, we embraced it. However, poor craftsmanship is a quality unique to musical populism. Populist authors, artists and filmmakers are expected not only to be a little stupid, but to be slick. Lack of vocabulary will render you incoherent, so writers are expected to know their way around the language, no matter how lowbrow their aims may be. And because it takes a lot of work to make a film come together in a way that makes any damn sense, we expect even more of movie directors.
Cake Boy, directed by Vandals bassist Joe Escalante and written by and starring bandmate Warren Fitzgerald, does not meet our expectations -- not only due to its low budget, and not only in spite of a few cool guest stars, but especially because of shoddy writing, acting and editing, Escalante's directorial debut is a perfect example of why an approach that works for music doesn't always work in other forms.
From the very first, Cake Boy is a gratingly uncomfortable film. As an off-camera Fitzgerald seeks refuge from his abusive girlfriend, we're treated to tight close-ups of women in neck braces and black eyes -- all victims of domestic abuse -- calling him a pussy. If he wants his girlfriend to stop hitting him, they say, maybe he should grow some balls. The counselor on hand struggles not to laugh. Get comfortable, folks. These battered wives are about as likable as any character you'll meet throughout the story.
We next see Selwyn Hillis (Fitzgerald) on his way to work in full chef regalia. As it turns out, Selwyn is a chef at an erotic bakery -- and a damn good one, too. Escalante trots out his prize guest stars immediately. First Brian Posehn, TV's favorite bizarrely shaped geek and more specifically the creepy mail guy from Just Shoot Me, hangs around for a couple of scenes. The man's very existence is inherently amusing, so these moments are not entirely without merit, though you'll be surprised just how little you laugh during his scenes. Like every guest appearance, he drops out of the film almost as suddenly as he appeared, never to be mentioned again.
Likewise, comedic genius (and, as much as it hurts to admit it, the only reason to watch the ridiculously mediocre sitcom King of Queens) Patton Oswalt shows up, chats nervously about how he wants a really realistic vagina cake, then comes back the next day to scream in disgust about the chocolate sprinkle pubic hair Selwyn thoughtfully included. If you stopped watching here, you wouldn't miss out on much.
Cake Boy officially jumps the shark when we meet Selwyn's girlfriend. She tosses a book case on him and yells for a while before Selwyn placates her with the fact that the long red hair she found in her car's front seat was, in fact, her mother's. Played by Pam Gidley as possibly the most irritating character not played by Jerry O'Connell that you'll see in a film this year, the girlfriend successfully telegraphs the pain that is to come.
One incoherently edited major plot point later (I guess she was arrested for beating him in her car -- exactly what happened to cause all this is lost on me, and probably anyone else who wasn't involved in the making of the film), Selwyn is so desperate to escape her that he begs No Use For a Name to let him be their roadie. Eventually you'll figure out that their manager knows his name because he's Selwyn's next door neighbor, which also conveniently explains what the band was doing there in the first place. The members of No Use For a Name can barely get through a whole line, so it's a good thing their (presumably fictional) manager does most of the talking for the rest of this sequence as the band abuses, humiliates and shows their corn-riddled shit to Selwyn.
That's not a joke. If you watch Cake Boy, you will spend a full minute of your time staring at a gas station toilet absolutely covered in thick, brown shit, chock-full of huge kernels of corn. You'll even get to watch as a large chunk of it slowly falls off of the toilet seat, you lucky devil, you.
If you're still watching past that point, it must be a matter of principle, or out of determination to see the other guest stars. Tenacious D's Kyle Gass pops in to give Selwyn a new job, transform the story completely and then inexplicably disappear, while Bob Odenkirk of Mr. Show notoriety appears for just long enough to awkwardly tell us his character's own name and have an uncomfortable, unfunny moment with the camera. His character was apparently killed immediately after this scene. We know this because another actor tells us about it fifteen minutes later.
It's a sad thing when you realize that Cake Boy's best jokes come at the expense of the wheelchair-bound girlfriend (Sheila Platte) Selwyn picks up halfway through the film. A couple of obligatory musical montages culminate in an Iron Chef style bakeoff in France, followed by an incoherent fight scene in which shirts leave and latch onto Selwyn's body without rhyme or reason, and a wheelchair is an inexplicably lethal weapon. Kyle Gass's disappearance also becomes especially troublesome in a series of scenes that all logic says he really, really should have been involved in.
For the price of one film, you also get the film's soundtrack. It is, as you'd expect, pretty much a Kung Fu Records compilation -- lots of punk, none of it that great, much of it almost as childish and half-finished as the film itself. 0
In case you're still wondering if Cake Boy is going to be recommended at some point, the answer is no. Escalante has good taste in guest stars, but that can only take you so far, especially if you can't get them to hang around as long as their characters logically should. Jokes about boogers, ear wax, and tons of chunky shit make up much of the purported humor, and they demonstrate yet another of the key differences between making a song and making a movie. If you make a joke about shit in a song, your listener doesn't have to actually see it slowly sliding off the toilet seat. Little damage is done. If you make a film with a joke about shit, you have the option of actually showing it, and its memory will long outlive anything legitimately funny you might have done with your movie. It's just another example of why The Vandals are going to have to learn some new tricks if they really want to be filmmakers.
-- Mike Meginnis
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