Tripper
Itās always pretty hilarious to hear a liberal try to badmouth former President Ronald Reagan (or even funnier, liken him to Obama) because itās obviously always a classic case of sour grapes, with these people being green with envy that they havenāt had a strong, definitive leader to call their own since arguably FDR, as he was a man who certainly left this country in better shape than before he took office. Some of that on the surface would seem to translate to the idea of this 2006 release (directed by Scream star David Arquette), an imaginative slasher flick with the premise of a Ronald Reagan-obsessed serial killer who wears a latex mask of Reagan and spouts several Reagan-type cliches (āItās morning in America.ā āWellā¦ā) while doing his butchery on a chosen target of liberal hippies attending a (very) low-rent Woodstock-type concert in a small woodsy California town. What Arquette gets right from the get-go is the idea that the hippie types are portrayed as complete morons who are drugged out of their mind, particularly the main group the story focuses on which includes Jason (Jay) Mewes and Lukas Haas (best known as the kid from Witness and doomed to play weaklings and wimps for the rest of his life), thus saving the film from criticism that it is particularly partisan, plus the fact that the film (most notably the final scene) has some good gruesome gore to keep the viewer from falling asleep. As a matter of fact, the script does a good job of espousing fairly reasoned conservative points of view from the mouths of a few characters, such as an old man (Redmond Gleeson) who saw his lumber business destroyed by tree-hugging hippies in the 60s and now grows marijuana in order to make ends meet. Where the problems arise is from a lackadaisically slow pace (especially in the first half) and poor character development for the hippie characters, with such nuggets like Mewes going on a (tongue in cheek) rant about how G.W. Bush is the greatest President ever to Haas singing a horrendous folk song to a girl he likes because he thinks it will get him laid. The ostensible heroine of the piece is Jaime King (best known as āGoldieā from Sin City) as a girl who had a VERY bad experience from arguing with her conservative boyfriend (Balthazer Getty) while high on LSD and has thus vowed to not do ANY drugs over the course of the weekend music festival (much to her chagrin). Also in the cast are Paul Reubens getting some laughs as the sleazy promoter of the festival, Thomas Jane looking a little lost as the small town police chief trying to contain the mayhem, and Arquette himself as the leader of a trio of rednecks who mess with our main protagonists. Arquette does demonstrate some visual flair during the sequence where King is (unwillingly) given a dose of acid while being chased by The Reagan Killer and is forced to try to escape and protect herself while she trips out and The Reagan Killer starts slaughtering all the (high as a kite) young people partying around her. However, the film pretty much trips over itself at the end with a near unforgivable plot hole (the cops leave the Killerās dead body unattended?!), and the whole thing never quite gels into something truly great. That being said, Arquette does show some promise as a director of offbeat material, and one hopes his next effort turns out to be something more inspiredā¦
7/10