Furry Vengeance (2010)

The makers of Furry Vengeance owe an apology to Miley Cyrus. Brendan Fraser screams her name as an exclamation just before one of the many car crashes and mishaps that comprise the majority of this abysmal film. I imagine the two hacks who wrote this tripe (and whose only previous credit is the Billy Bob Thornton flop Mr. Woodcock) thought they could capture the same laughter that greeted Steve Carell’s shout, “Aaaaah, Kelly Clarkson!” in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Instead, their tween-targeted spin on the gag is an obvious ripoff, awkwardly shoehorned into the script, and one of many theoretically comedic moments that fail to generate a single laugh.

I also want to personally offer an apology to Miss Cyrus. I trashed her movie The Last Song several weeks ago, giving it our site’s lowest rating of one star. But if I could bestow upon her film, say, an extra eighth of a star–or maybe a sixteenth–it would better reflect my considered opinion that if the forces of evil made me choose between repeated screenings of The Last Song or Furry Vengeance as a form of torture, I would immediately choose the former.

If you’ve seen the trailer, posters, or ads for this movie, you can easily surmise what it’s about. But, for those of you who’ve been blissfully unexposed: Brendan Fraser works for a land development company owned by a greedy, insensitive Asian guy (Ken Jeong, from The Hangover and every other comedy released lately). He’s uprooted his wife (Brooke Shields in the least substantial role of her career) and teenage son (Matt Prokop) from their comfortable Chicago home to live in the model home of the subdivision on which he’s supervising construction.

Even though Fraser, his boss, and his company all espouse that they’re “green” and “eco-friendly,” they’re building in a forested region, with future plans to strip all the natural terrain. This is unwelcome news for the birds and animals of the forest, who apparently are capable of understanding English (coming close to speaking it occasionally), engineering and constructing an elaborate Rube Goldberg-style chain reaction as a line of defense, and launching an escalating series of countermeasures directed at Fraser. And of course, nobody believes him when he asserts that the animals are targeting him with repeated harassment, even when the evidence is right before them; for instance, Brooke Shields soundly sleeps while a crow loudly pecks on their bedroom window and drives her husband nuts, yet she awakens at the slightest sound of his distress and doesn’t believe his reason for it.

I’m not mentioning any characters’ names because to do so would mislead you into thinking they have even a fleeting connection to the real world. This waste of perfectly good film stock has the depth of a kindergarten coloring book, and it blatantly targets single-digit-aged children with its substance-free, “look at the cute and silly animals, now hug a tree today” content. The filmmakers’ environmental message and attempted depiction of same is so stupidly inept that it has zero credibility, and could even trigger a backlash. I certainly wanted to throw my drink cup and popcorn bag at the screen, rather than deposit them in the trash can. This movie is “green” more in its amateurish execution than in its message.

I’m embarrassed for the entire cast of this film. Gerry Bednob, hilarious as the foul-mouthed Indian salesman Mooj in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, looks good in a suit for a change as he plays a rich Indian investor, but endures his scene with the demeanor of someone passing a kidney stone. Wallace Shawn loses any respect I ever had for him as an actor and playwright by picking up a paycheck for his single, humor-free scene as a psychoanalyst. Angela Kinsey plays pretty much the same officious bitch as her character on The Office, but with longer hair and much less laughter. And Toby Huss, a versatile performer who voiced both Hank’s father Cotton and neighbor Khan on King Of The Hill, is so pointlessly annoying as an inept security chief that I grew nostalgic for his recurring role as an annoying drug addict on Reno 911!

Most of all, I feel disappointed–again–by Brendan Fraser. Do we need to stage an intervention for this guy? I wish I could sit in a room with him, look into his eyes, and tell him: Brendan, you’re a nice, likable guy, and obviously talented. I saw Gods And Monsters, and you were terrific, even better than your co-star Ian McKellen, in my opinion. You can charm the screen, and your comedic and dramatic chops are first-rate. But you’re hurting yourself, your career, and the people who care about you when you repeatedly star in shallow, shitty movies like this one and that disease-of-the-week movie you just did with Harrison Ford, Extraordinary Measures. Is it a new agent you need, Brendan? Did you lose your savings by investing with a shyster like Bernie Madoff? Is it some other illicit activity you need funding for? Or do we need to slap you like we’re Cher in Moonstruck and yell at you to snap out of it? Please, Mr. Fraser, seek help. It pains me to see you like this.

Maybe I’m biased against cutesy animal movies ever since Babe incredulously beat Apollo 13 for the visual effects Oscar, but this insipid, deathly unfunny film is one of the absolute worst movies I’ve ever seen–and I’ve seen Troll 2. As I hurriedly fled the theater at the end of Furry Vengeance, a lyric from a “Weird Al” Yankovic song played in my mind: “I’d rather spend eternity eating shards of broken glass than spend one more minute with you.”

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