Movie Review: Give these “Mother Schmuckers” a wide berth

Every generation has its own tolerance level for grossout, antic comedy, and the farce “Mother Schmuckers (Fils de plouc)” takes a stab at pushing that boundary on behalf of Gen Z.

The Belgian siblings Lenny Guit and Harpo Guit start with “Pink Flamingos,” and take a “Kentucky Fried Movie” curtain call. And in between is a scattering of frantic, nonsensical and barely-translatable Tim & Eric “you had to be there to be in on it” comedy.

They slapped together a movie that moves, but doesn’t exactly “progress” from point A to any point at all through a string of random scenes, situations, tussles and the like. They start with baking feces, an act their sex worker mother (Claire Bodson) interrupts, drift into bestiality, dismemberment and necrophilia and wrap with a post-closing-credits film within a film that’s no funnier than the short and nonsensical hooey we’ve just endured.

What the hell award-winner and one-time Bond villain Mathieu Amalric is doing in this atrocity is anybody’s guess.

Their mother is depressed and avoiding her (State licensed?) pimp (Chaida Chady Suku Suku) and more than willing to tell these two, siblings Issachar (Maxi Delmelle) and Zabulon (Harpo Guit), that she loves her terrier more than them.

Making Mommy vomit makes Mommy cross, after all.

The 20ish lads proceed to stumble through working-poor Brussels, shoplifting at a local market, insulting and fending off Mom’s lovesick and morbidly obese client (Toni d’Antonio) and getting mixed up with a friend (Valentin Wilbaux) who is hellbent on making his own movie. He says he’s lined up a car. And he’s quick to show off a pistol he’s procured.

The brothers take it target shooting — hunting for pigeons, an accident waiting to happen. The dog? They Journey Jack, as he’s called, early on. But not before they’ve encouraged a stranger to buy him off them, or help pay for his “testicular cancer” (in French with English subtitles), with the dog biting the lady’s kid — hard.

“He’s bitten me a LOT, and you don’t hear me whining about it!”

There’s an antic energy to these opening scenes as the boys tussle over the gun and find themselves chased through the streetlife of their hood, where the sight of them sprinting with a pistol draws cries of “JiHAD!” They’re bounced by a cop (another client of their busy busy mother), threatened,

They cost a guy his job, and that’s the very guy who decides all his friends should take a swing at Zabulon.

“Everybody slap him! He’s like a Playmobile!”

None of this adds up to anything, save for the gritty, down-and-out backdrop that is the setting of “Mother Schmuckers.”

The trailer to this was frenetic enough that I came in expecting something zippier and wittier. I laughed maybe twice.

That could be a “wrong generation to ‘get it'” thing. But I’m putting my money on “This ugly, gross, spittle-spattered and incoherent junk movie just isn’t funny.”

Rating: unrated, violence, sexual content, profanity, gross gags

Cast: Harpo Guit, Maxi Delmelle, Claire Bodson, Chaida Chady Suku Suku and Mathieu Amalric

Credits: Scripted and directed by Harpo Guit and Lenny Guit A Dark Star release.

Running time: 1:11

About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine
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