Postal Reviews

Uwe Boll's reputation as a hack extraordinaire rests on leaden feature-film versions of popular video games, including BLOODRAYNE (2006), HOUSE OF THE DEAD (2003) and IN THE NAME OF THE KING: A DUNGEON SIEGE TALE (2008). But POSTAL is a whole different ball of gunk: Though also rooted in a videogame, it aspires to the satirical outrages of BORAT : CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN (2006) but settles for juvenile offensiveness in the Troma tradition. It's another day in Paradise, Arizona, for the unemployed Dude (former child actor Zack Ward), who's married to morbidly obese nymphomaniac Bitch (Jodie Stewart) and being cuckolded by every resident of the dismal trailer park they call home. On his way home from a humiliating interview at local corporate soul-sucker Gluttco, he's caught in an unemployment-office shootout and kills an aggressive panhandler (Michael Pare). In desperation, Dude appeals to his Uncle Dave (Dave Foley, of Kids in the Hall), who seems to have it made: He founded the hippie-dippy Denomination of Organic Monotheism and is living la vida free love. But Uncle Dave has his own troubles: The IRS is about to seize everything and throw him in jail. Fortunately, he has an idea: Hijack the only available shipment of heavily advertised Krotchy dolls – talking, penis-shaped plush toys whose repertory of cute sayings includes "Don't touch me there!" – from nearby Little Germany, a Nazi-themed amusement park run by Uwe Boll (playing a less truculent version of himself… or maybe the lederhosen just lend him a puckish air). Selling the dolls on eBay will solve their financial problems. Unfortunately, Osama Bin Laden (Larry Thomas) and his terrorist halfwits, currently operating out of Habib's Lucky Ganesh Convenience Store, are after the dolls for their own nefarious reasons. POSTAL is nothing if not fearless: It opens with a 9/11 hijackers joke and ends with Bin Laden and George W. Bush (Brent Mendenhall) holding hands in a grassy meadow as Chinese nuclear missiles rain down from the sky. But fearlessness doesn't automatically translate into transgression, which uses shock tactics to unmask social or political hypocrisy. And fearlessness isn't inherently funny: POSTAL's touches of wit are lost in the flying body parts, gross-out gags, and the full frontal spectacle of Foley's no-longer-private parts.