Postal - DVD Review

The German modern-day Ed Wood, assteur Uwe Boll, throws his director hat into the satire ring with this über-embarrassing pic that manages to be both relentlessly tasteless and painfully dull in equal measure.

Aiming for something akin to the accomplishments of Matt Stone and Trey Parker (‘South Park’ and ‘Team America’), this pathetic attempt at post-9/11 shocks only manages to involve the viewer through the old adage of not being able to take your eyes off a train wreck.

Despite a fifteen million budget, the film looks like it was shot with equipment found at your local Goodwill and incompetent framing and a nonsensical narrative will have you screaming from the room begging for a Sci-Fi Channel movie. Amazingly, this still manages to be Boll’s best film despite being yet another videogame adaptation after other even worse vidgame pics ‘House of the Dead’, ‘Alone in the Dark’ and ‘BloodRayne’. This film is based on the widely criticized PC ‘Postal’ games that gained infamy for being banned as works of tasteless mayhem – defenders labeled the game as too exaggerated to be taken seriously a la ‘Grand Theft Auto’ – and Boll hews closely to that formula. To describe the plot in detail would be sure to make me stupider, so I’ll go ahead and hit the broad strokes to save my brain cells for a loss that I really care about: Grey Goose vodka!Life-weary doormat Dude (Zack Ward) has about had it with his meager existence in the ironically named American town of Paradise. With a brutish, overweight wife and no luck in the career department, he decides to join up with his cult leader uncle (Dave Foley whose shamelessness knows no bounds apparently) in a scheme to steal cock-and-ball shaped toy dolls called ‘Krotchy Dolls’ from a fascist theme park.

Unfortunately, Osama Bin Laden and his Taliban cohorts have the same idea so Dude and Uncle find themselves in a series of action-packed misadventures…hardy har. With a prologue focusing on two terrorists arguing in a cockpit about the number of virgins promised to them before crashing into the World Trade Center and the viewpoint of a window washer, Austin Power’s Verne Troyer being raped by a 1,000 monkeys and George ‘Dubya’ Bush and Osama skipping hand-in-hand towards a nuclear blast, the film is desperate to shock. However, it’s all so poorly handled, that it comes off as a second-grader spouting language that he’s heard but can’t possibly understand. So does that make the film dangerous? No – just pathetic. Visually, the film is as ugly as its script. Presented in an anamorphic widescreen transfer, the low-budget image is grainy, over-saturated and flat. Special Features on the disc include an unintentionally funny commentary track from the man himself, Uwe Boll, who proceeds to talk about his film as if God himself financed it. He take potshots at a variety of other filmmakers and stars, and I have to admit the no-awareness on this guy makes for an entertaining listen. And taking that a step further is the sad featurette ‘Raging Boll’ – where Uwe Boll challenged some online critics to an actual boxing match in Vancouver - where Boll, a once amateur boxer, proceeds to bash in the heads of lanky, pasty online critics. What was everyone thinking that was involved with this poorly conceived stunt? A short behind the scenes, a scene with Verne Troyer dressed up as Indiana Jones and a trailer round out the extras. The packaging promises a second disc with the full ‘Postal 2’ PC videogame but the review copy didn’t include this. If Ed Wood, John Waters, Matt Stone and Trey Parker all had retarded children and if by some miracle of Satan, those children spawned their own retarded child, that child might make a film that resembled ‘Postal’…but better. A few nervous laughs might be had early on but trust me when I say it’s not worth it.