

There’s something almost criminal about Amazon acquiring the 2020 immigration “comedy” “Deported,” and passing it off as a “new” “2026” release on their streaming service.
There hasn’t been a good time to unleash a raunchy, tone deaf and whitewashed farce about immigration in the past decade. But putting this Trump I era disaster in front of eyeballs in the middle of the murderously inhumane Trump II regime is damned near criminal.
It’s a familiar-faces/little-known-names romp buried under f-bombs, coarse sex jokes and a cascade of cameos. It’s tooth-grindingly bad, so much so that even Sandler hanger-on Nick Swardson seems embarassed in his scenes in it.
Robert Davi as a customs agent? He seems disappointed the guy isn’t more sadistic.
Director and co-writer Tyler Spindel (“The Wrong Missy”) chickened-out straight away by making this about a Canadian blonde (Megan Park) our “illegal” — “Deported” and banned for messing up some paperwork.
So rather than something edgy, like Cheech and Chong’s decades old “Born in East L.A.,” he makes an unromantic and almost wholly unfunny “Green Card,” about blonde Harper’s dizzy-but-not-nearly-dizzy-enough beau Ross (Whitmer Thomas) refusing to commit to marrying her so that she can finish chef school and, you know, take a chef’s job from an “American” so that she can realize her dreams.
Threatened by his girlfriend’s hunkier and more eager to help friend (Greg Sulkin), Ross’s plan involves marrying her off to this slovenly lout (Mickey Gooch, Jr.) who crashed the Halloween party where Ross and Harper first met.
The odd early tasteless joke has promise — one costumed partygoer shows up nude and years past her last sit-up.
“I’m LENA DUNHAM! I’m COMFORTABLE with my body?”
The “GET it?” is implied in this and most every other “joke” rolled out from here on out.
Ross’s big tech idea is a “Dick Face” app he’s pushing, which adds a penis cap to any photo you post in it.
His sort-of-separated-under-the-same-roof parents (Brenda Strong, Kurt Fuller) trot out testiness about “getting married too young” and intolerance of this would-be-chef who was caught re-entering the country from an Indian cooking school’s seminar.
“She got a dot?”
That much of the movie’s messaging seems on the mark, the idea that America is a nation of descendents of immigrants but roiling with casual, off-the-cuff bigots.
As “there is no such thing as a fake marriage in a REAL relationship,” as on-the-make lesbian and Ross pal Tammy (Fortune Feimster) declares, this is where Doug Lipinski (Gooch) fits in.
He may be a walking, belching, unbathed butt-crack. He may not know how to pronounce his own name (first or last). He may be “definitely on the spectrum.” But he’s willing to sneak into Canada for a quickie fake wedding just to get Harper back across the border.
Conchata Ferrell (“Two and a Half Men”) is his brassy, bare-knuckled, not-quite-disapproving mom. Swardson plays his jealous, over-bearing brother.
Jokes about women as “fire breathing whore dragons,” life onboard Doug’s barely-floating converted-tug houseboat’s resident lava-lamp-humping rat, “butt chugging” and the like don’t move any thinking or sentient person’s needle.
Clint Howard, Missi Pyle, Steven Bauer and others trot by in unfunny cameos.
And the attempted story “arc,” where we glimpse Doug’s unhappy humanity and Ross grows a pair while Harper considers her options but not really, are all clumsily handled
“Cringe comedy” is one thing, and raunchy fare like this still plays to sensory-deprived stoners.
But this is just bad, and Bezos & Co. know it. Which is why they tried to pass it off as “new.”
Rating:
Cast: Whitmer Thomas, Megan Park, Mickey Gooch, Jr.,Fortune Feimster, Kurt Fuller, Brenda Strong, Steven Bauer, Missi Pyle, Clint Howard, Nick Swardson, Conchata Ferrell and Robert Davi.
Credits: Directed by Tyler Spindel, scripted by Tyler Spindel and Dean Ward. A Quiver release on Amazon Prime.
Running time: 1:31

