The Trailer Park Boys are back, well sort of, with a new DVD out in store Feb 12 from Anchor Bay Canada, “The Drunk and on Drugs Happy Funtime Hour”. The 6 episode series, presented here as a 2 hour 40 minute continuous movie, is a demented and twisted take on classic variety shows like “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”, “SCTV” and “Little Britain”. Being the main creative force behind the show this time around, the Trailer Park threesome has a more invested in its success, but will they be able to capture the same audience that made “Trailer Park Boys” a massive hit?
The Drunk and on Drugs Happy Funtime Hour DVD Review
Starring: Mike Smith, John Paul Tremblay, Robb Wells, Jay Baruchel, Amy Sedaris, Pat Roach and Maury Chaykin.
Written by Mike Smith, John Paul Tremblay and Robb Wells
Directed by Ron Murphy
“The Drunk and on Drugs Happy Funtime Hour” show stars former Trailer Park Boys actors John Paul Tremblay, Robb Wells and Mike Smith as fictionalized versions of themselves. The premise is that the trio are starring in a new sketch comedy series, Happy Funtime Hour, but their production goes awry when actor Maury Chaykin, playing the mad German scientist named Doctor Funtime, forces everyone on set to ingest a hallucinogenic substance he created believing himself to actually be Doctor Funtime. The trio must navigate numerous unpredictable events, while trying to stay sober and off the ‘blue drug’, while constantly meeting a variety of other actors all convinced they are their characters in the fictional town of Port Cockerton. These include a group of cultists, a mob family, a group of very unique and confused soldiers, landlocked pirates and their production assistant Pat (Roach) who seems immune to the effects of the blue drug.
The Drunk and on Drugs Happy Funtime Hour is sloppy, disorganized and all over the place, and this is actually the purpose of the show. The DVD playing as a full movie pieced together may have been better served remaining in its original 30 minute episodes because as a movie the show plays a lot like a run on sentence. The show is dominated by the Boys who besides playing ‘themselves’ also play multiple other characters under levels of makeup and false hair. Not all of these characters work as for example the drug dealers and mob family bring some laughs but the DJ’s at the all gay all the time radio station is a gimmick that wears thin really quick. Most of the primary storyline is centered around the guys getting messed up on drugs and having to be sequestered to sober up, only to run into the ‘townspeople’ who make sure they inevitably get back on drugs as soon as possible. Pat seems to be the only character who knows exactly what’s going on at all times. That entire premise of the show also does tend to lose momentum after the first couple of shows /first hour and a half. Jay Baruchel and Amy Sedaris both work really well here in supporting turns as Baruchel plays two polar opposite characters, both of which have their moments, and Sedaris as the money behind the show plays a cross between “SCTV’s” Guy Caballero and “Tropic Thunder’s” Les Grossman to great effect.
Very obviously shot on a low budget, the production does use inventive cut-aways, black and white camera mixed with stock footage and blue tinted camera work when the Boys are tripping to provide production value. The filming of the show takes place entirely in Nova Scotia so the setting and location shoots look great, though a lot of the show involves the cast simply stumbling through the woods. Using a television reporter to link the skits as they flow from report to report does help give the show some approximation of a flow, the reports themselves are hit and miss but they do work on enough of a ratio to make them enjoyable. The show also features animated sequences describing the exploits of 3 superhero characters, also played by the boys, which joyously look and feel like the old Robert Smigel Saturday Night Live cartoon shorts of years past. These animated interludes from Dave Cullen and Mirco Chen are tons of fun and are far too sparse in the overall running time of the show.
The DVD special features contain a series of ‘behind the scenes’ interviews with the cast, most of them still in character or pretending that the show is children’s programming, with the Mike Smith section looking very much like he was actually stoned at the time of the interview. Also included is the series of raw footage shot as the news reports for the show, shown here in their entirety.
The Drunk and on Drugs Happy Funtime Hour is ultimately a proposition full of hit and miss segments that miss more than they hit. The steady stream of penis, piss and fart/bowel movement jokes wears thin pretty quick. What’s left is a bunch of drug induced fantasies that closely resemble the drunken ramblings of people under the influence to the point where you may need to actually be on something to comprehend what the hell is going on here. Ultimately the biggest takeaway most people will have from The Drunk and on Drugs Happy Funtime Hour is wondering when the next Trailer Park Boys movie is coming out.
2 out of 5 stars.
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