Swiss Army Man is, at its simplest, a movie about a man stranded on a desert island who finds a flatulent corpse that he rides like a jetski… and talks to and uses to help him survive in weird ways. On the surface, it’s one giant art house/indie fart joke but dig a little deeper and its quasi-intellectual treatise on what it’s like to be human… which seems to involve a lot of farting and wagging boners…. and ponderous and meaningful indie rock songs.
Very hard to describe it seriously. The corpse is played by Daniel Radcliffe who has far more speaking lines than you might expect for a dead body. And he, when its his actual body, does a fairly good job emulating how a dead person might looks and behave while also having meaningful conversations about life and women and fear and boners.
I found this movie kind of insufferably full of itself. It’s supposed to be deep and profound while trying to shock the audience with its dancing boner humor (if you’ve seen the writer/director’s video for Turn Down for What, you might get an idea of what Harry Potter’s private parts are doing). I mean, it’s not like they aren’t Saying Something… but I’m not sure what it’s saying would appeal to anyone over twenty. Not saying that teenagers don’t love them a good boner joke but that the revelations about life are, like, wow man. Deep. If you haven’t had much life experience.
The movie is at least smart enough to acknowledge that the main character might be crazy and maybe the dead body he’s hanging out with isn’t really talking. And that almost works out great by the end of the movie where we can kind of / sort of see what might really have been going on for the past 90 minutes. But, no, it pulls its punches so it doesn’t even have the courage of its morbid and twisted convictions.
So there ya go… an obscure indie art house film that dares you to stare into the bare butt of Daniel Radcliffe as he acts as a jetski that wants to be super meaningful but failed. Hey, maybe it’s just me though. You might go along for the farty ride and buy what the movie is selling. It’s certainly unique, Radcliffe does a credible job, and the best part is writing a review that will probably just baffle people. And I get to use the word boner a lot. Teehee?
Score: 70