Don't Hassle The Hoff.
2017-08-29
N/A
80 min
A man in a high stakes celebrity death pool quickly loses everything - his business, his bank account, his home, his fiancé. He snaps, then realizes the only way to get his life back on track. He'll have to murder his own celebrity. He'll have to kill Hasselhoff.
Not good, but better than I had prepared myself for. Killing Hasselhoff is mercifully short, has maybe two genuine laughs, and arguably contains Rhys Darby's best performance to date. I mean it's still a movie with David Hasselhoff starring as David Hasselhoff, which do not exactly have a great track record, but it's a far cry from the worst comedies America has produced.
Final rating:★★ - Had some things that appeal to me, but a poor finished product.
Good watch, would watch again, and can recommend.
I'm sure people are still a fan of David Hasselhoff, but I think the joke (since about "Piranha DD") is becoming that he's not famous anymore. This movie seems to have elements where that seems to be the case, and other where it seems to be a celebration of how he's still famous enough.
I honestly love watching Dr. Ken Jeong work, he's a funny guy, and I think he's by far the funniest person in this movie. Will Sasso just has a joke of a character, nothing really funny performance-wise, and Rhys Darby is the next funniest, but only because his character is insane. Colton Dunn spends most of it making gay jokes that I neither really understood or felt comfortable with, though the concept of having to kill someone you love is very intriguing, just not all that funny.
There are a lot of funny people in this movie, but they're wasted on some situational comedy more than anything else. A lot of the movie is just bad things happening Ken, and while I would have been more amused if it was (for example) Ben Stiller ("Duplex"), it is because I like Ken Jeong that it's more sad than funny at points.
This is one of those comedies written by comedians for comedians, and is lost on general audiences somewhat because they're not direct enough. While the joke is the scene, and the scene itself is somewhat funny, it is the verbal jokes that really stand out, and they're few and far between.
Situational comedy is fine, but it takes a lot of work for it to pay off so we're spending a lot of time establishing the setup for the joke or explaining why it's funny.
I think it was mostly just that I wasn't in the mood to laugh at someone's life falling apart, but I really think this could have been great instead of just good.
