The FP Review: Come Talkin' That Trash and We'll Pull Your Card

By Brian Prisco | Film | March 20, 2011 |

By Brian Prisco | Film | March 20, 2011 |

Frazier Park, mothafuckas! Long have I been lamenting the making-a-bad-movie-on-purpose subgenre as of late, because I think if filmmakers try and stick to the joke throughout, they can make a damn fun movie. And if ever there were an example of that, it’s the Trost Bros. The FP. This thing looks like it was shot for the lint-dusted pocket change sitting in a bedside jar and three handjobs to be delivered later. The concept is absolutely donkeyballs ludicrious: underground street gangs roam the countryside of rural California settling their disputes with showdowns on the Beat-Beat Revolution dance machine. The entire thing is steeped in a late eighties veneer with characters spouting an exaggerated hip-hop patois — calling each other “nig” and “bitch” and requesting someone “check a look” at things. With a lily-white cast — save for the remarkable lone Asian — it’s a fucking risk. And it pays off. The FP cannot possibly be taken seriously as a film, and yet they hold the joke like a particularly long bong hit. It’s completely juvenile, incredibly derogatory, aggressively cheesy, and insanely hilarious. It’s a manic daisy chain of Double Dragon fucking The Warriors boning Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo humping 8 Mile. It’s an ungodly, sticky, fucked-up mess, and I loved it til the last glorious frame.

In a post apocalyptic world, street gangs rule the roost. The gangs are decked out in sort of 80’s kitsch — leather jumpsuits, jean jackets, Mr. T mohawks — basically all the guys you’d battle in digital fury on a Nintendo. J-TRO (Jason Trost) sports Bon Jovi feathered hair and an eyepatch, his nemesis L-Double-E (Lee Valmassy) looks like Abobo from Double Dragon with a Mr. T mohawk and facial hair and gold rimmed teeth. Tussles are settled by showdowns on Beat-Beat Revolution, a clear mockup of Dance-Dance Revolution but where the machine exhorts “Nigga Please” and “Awww Snap,” where dancers try to “187” their opponents. When BTRO, JRTO’s brother, gets iced, he quits the gang and works in a lumber mill. Until KCDC (Art Hsu) tracks him down from his sad-Hulk-walking-away music exit and convinces him to come back to the FP. Because — and yes, this is the shitballs motivation for the entire film — L-Double-E’s gang controls the liquor stores, and thus they control the bums, and without the bums no one’s feeding the ducks, and how can you have a motherfucking town without ducks?

The film rolls out like every bad 80’s bad Simpson-Bruckheimer style film I secretly own: Commando, Cobra, anything starring Jean-Claude Van Damme from a decade later. JTRO romances his old crush Stacy (Caitlyn Folley) while trying to train to take out L-Double-E and wrest control of the FP. While a majority of the film takes place in litter strewn, post-apocalyptic looking wastelands, the rest of the film takes place in the idyllic, white-trash exterior of actual Frazier Park where the filmmakers were raised. White trash talking an amped up ghetto slang has sold a ton of records for both Eminem and Kid Rock, and the Trost Bros. are able to get mileage by sticking to it. Sure, there’s a heavy dose of irony going on, but it’s the world they’ve built for the film, and they never veer from it. It’s a dumbass movie, and so fucking proud of it, as well it should be. Like WWE, any energy drink that comes in a non-standard soda can, or the Neveldine/Taylor films where the Trost Bros. cut their teeth, the cast — as well as interesting cameos by Clifton Collins, Jr. and Sean Whalen (Frogurt from “Lost”, The People Under The Stairs) — clearly doesn’t give a shit whether you like them or not, they’re loud and bombastic and headbutt to the face bag of hammers shittarded. And you’ll have a fucking blast.

The FP screened as part of the SXSW 2011 Film Festival