The Animal

A loser of a man who can’t make it as a cop, dies in a horrible car accident, only to be brought back to life by a nutty doctor who replaces many of his organs with animal parts. The result is a man who is seemingly controlled by his animal urges. Hilarity ensues?

Before you read my review, you really gotta know that I loved DEUCE BIGALOW, it honestly cracked me up throughout. But when I saw the trailer for Rob Schneider’s latest cinematic odyssey, it didn’t particularly strike my fancy (i.e. I didn’t think that it was funny). And now that I’ve seen the entire picture, I still don’t think that it’s all that funny. Sure, the concept itself does sound like something that might generate a gaggle of laughs, but the sight of Schneider licking his sack, swimming like a seal and jumping around from branch to branch like a monkey…just didn’t make me laugh. It’s that simple. The whole thing just felt like another dumb “Saturday Night Live” movie based on one joke, a joke in which unfortunately, I didn’t find much hilarity. Now I don’t know exactly why I didn’t think any of it was funny, but I guess that has to do with your own personal sense of humor. My buddy next to me was cracking up at plenty of the same scenes which I didn’t think were amusing, so who knows, maybe you’ll like it too, but then again, he also thought that the trailer was pretty funny, so I guess that has something to do with it. One thing is for sure though, if you’ve seen this movie’s trailer and didn’t think that it was all that comical, skip this movie all the way because pretty much all of the “big” jokes are in there, and if you didn’t roll with it then, I doubt that you’re gonna dig it now that it’s up on the big screen.

So why am I giving it a 4/10? Well, I generally do find at least “some” things in all movies that give it a little bit of worth. This time around, the positives in this film were actually pretty obvious to figure out. First of all, John C. McGinley’s character is hilarious. He’s the tough as nails cop with veins popping out of every muscle in his body and he doesn’t like Schneider. McGinley plays the character to a tee and he steals every scene that he is in. I also drooled over one particular scene of a lovely lady sauntering down a sidewalk in a mini white dress or skirt or whatever. Not exactly sure what happened after that, because as soon as she bent over…so did I! I’d also like to throw some props out to the one ongoing joke that “worked” for me in this movie and that was the “black guy” joke. I won’t ruin it here but the theory itself was quite funny. And last but certainly not least…Colleen Haskell. Aaaaaaaah, Colleen Haskell. Aaaaaaaah, I say again…Colleen Haskell. Just adorable! Put that girl on the screen for 85 more minutes and I’m there! Aaaaaaah…Colleen Haskell. Harumph, but enough about her. Okay, so there were a couple of things that I did appreciate about this movie, but don’t misinterpret that as a positive review. Overall, I didn’t think that anything that Schneider did in this film was funny, and I guess that really is the bottom line. If you think that seeing Schneider acting like different animals is entertaining, well, then I guess you might enjoy some of this. If not, forget this movie every happened and rent DEUCE BIGALOW again…now that’s a funny movie! “You can do it!”

PS: Oh yeah, I also dug the fact that they kept the “You can do it!” gag going in this movie as well (for Sandler fans, you know what I’m talking about). It’s also interesting to see who says it in this film (but I won’t ruin that for you here either).

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian