Gentlemen Broncos

There is virtue in quitting while you’re ahead. Take Jared Hess, co-writer and director of the left-field 2004 smash Napoleon Dynamite. That Big Sky Motion Pictures freak show was a minor scientific miracle, as close as you can get to comedy existing in a vacuum, but his follow-up was the box-office stink bomb Nacho Libre. So, it’s no surprise that he returns to the realm of middle-American grotesquerie for the barely released 2009Gentlemen Broncos, a film so lacking in comedic properties that it should be dissected and examined like a cadaver. Michael Angarano plays Benji, a nerdy writer of crotch-gag-heavy fantasy fiction whose story gets plagiarized by his hero, the buffoonish Chevalier (Jemaine Clement). Much of the “humor” in Gentlemen Broncos revolves around people making funny faces, so at least my 15-month-old nephew might enjoy it; more developed brains should steer clear.