Collegiate Times

Comedy is harder than drama. The line between funny and painful is so fine that the person next to you may be holding his or her stomach and crying with laughter as you check your voicemail praying for this seemingly endless, 88-minute prison sentence to be over.

It's so fine that when two virtually identical movies are made, such as "Black Sheep" and "Tommy Boy," one is incomprehensibly better ("Tommy Boy") than the other. That's why when a film such as "Strange Wilderness" is made, viewers owe a debt of gratitude to the filmmakers for not clogging up our heads with questions of whether it's good or bad, or even sometimes funny. They have graciously cut out the gray area and left no nagging questions. This movie is bad. How bad? I was the one checking my voicemail.

"Strange Wilderness" made me think about writing this review under a pseudonym, fearing that the byline would incriminate me in the next few weeks when viewing the movie becomes illegal. The film begins ominously as Peter Gaulkes (Steve Zahn) is lighting a joint while on the phone, which works as a carnival sign, suggesting one must be this stoned to enjoy. Peter's dad was a popular host of a wildlife show, and when he died, the show was passed to Peter. This may come as a surprise, but after all the stock footage of sharks, giraffes, bears and zebras, the only thing I learned from the film was that Ernest Borgnine is still alive, albeit a zombie throwing away any respectability that might have been leftover from the '50s.

Peter's version of the show, which informs viewers that far fewer bears are killed by salmon than the other way around, has somehow fallen on hard times. He learns that he has two weeks to shape the show up or it's going to be canceled. What should he do? Learn as much as a real biologist in two weeks? Rob a bank so when he ultimately fails it won't be too bad? Quit the show and start selling insurance? No way, he finds out that Bigfoot keeps a summer cave down in Ecuador and decides that footage of the mythical creature is just what he needs to save his Dad's legacy.

If the movie is a comedic quest to find Bigfoot, the Jack Link's "Messin' with Sasquatch" commercials do a far better job. It isn't that though; in fact it's hard to tell what it is because it is simply a revolving door of unfunny characters and unimpressive cameos. Discontinuity can be forgiven if it makes me laugh, but it didn't, not once. Not when they dubbed "funny" voices over animal footage, or when Steve Zahn yelled a bunch. Not when the guide showed his mangled genitals, or when Zahn made racist impressions. I especially didn't laugh when the entire cast devoted an entire minute to jokes about a guy named Dick. "Does your name get hard in the morning?" I'm serious.

At the very most, I thought that maybe this was an attempt for the country to see the vital necessity of writers. If idiots like this are allowed to subject us to their idea of comedy without any kind of restraint or precaution, the studios will finally see the importance of professionals such as those of the W.G.A. Or at least I thought that until I discovered that the film's writers Peter Gaulke and Fred Wolf are members of the W.G.A. We must accept that the strike will never end, because all the studios have to do is use "Strange Wilderness" to question why they should pay more to people completely and utterly incapable of writing a single successful joke or line of dialogue.

To the film's credit, it is quick at 88 minutes long, though far from painless. Happy Madison productions is a disgrace to the two films that made Adam Sandler famous. Every day people effortlessly repeat lines from "Happy Gilmore" and "Billy Madison," but it's going to take a lot more energy to erase the memory of "Strange Wilderness." If you're looking for a stoner film, wait until April for the second "Harold and Kumar."