Title: Postal: The Movie
Price: $26.99 (DVD), $34.99 (Blu-Ray)
Release Date: August 26, 2008
Studio: Vivendi Entertainment
Rating: “Not Rated” (Blood, violence, mature humor, nudity, strong language and sexual themes).
Pros: Surprisingly decent cinematography and funny moments. Plenty of guest appearances and carnage. Ships with full version of Postal 2 videogame and includes Boll boxing matches as bonus feature.
Cons: Some really low points of humor. Not quite as shocking as promised or as bloody as expected but definitely not for kids.
Overall Score: One thumb up and one thumb down; 75/100; C; * * 1/2 out of five.
It’s a sad truth that games based on movies generally suck. Movies based on games, unfortunately, usually aren’t much better.
So, if you embrace the inevitable crapitude and give one of the most offensive video games to a filmmaker infamous for horrible game-to-big-screen adaptations, you should get a pile of putrid stupidity in the form of an entirely dismissible movie, right?
Well, not exactly.
Going, Going, Gone Postal
Filmmaker Uwe Boll, infamous for the craptastic big screen adaptations of games including Bloodrayne and Hitman, bought the rights to make Postal into a film that has been marketed as being, “Disgusting. Offensive. Stupid.” (No, really. It says so right on the box.)
Since the game does not really have a plot, Boll takes elements from Postal 2 and the overall offensive nature of both games as an excuse to joke about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, gay love, cults, getting a job, midgets, cops, monkeys and Nazis. Kids get shot, a midget gets tossed and Dave Foley does an onscreen crotch scratching session. Sans pants. Full frontal.
The plot for the movie revolves around an unnamed man (Zack Ward) who cannot land a job and is kicked out of his house. In an effort to leave Paradise, AZ, he and his swarmy cult leader of an uncle Dave (Dave Foley) decide to steal penis-shaped Kritchy toys, stop a terrorist attack and evade angry mobs who mistake him as the guy who killed innocents at the local amusement park. With a band of gun-toting, scantily-clad ladies in tow, of course.
The movie includes tons of guns, lots of bodies and plenty of artificial bullet holes (I didn’t see anyone being beaten with their own arm, though). There are also plenty of semi-recognizable lesser actor appearances in the film with Foley, Ward and Verne Troyer (as himself) being the most noteworthy.
The DVD release also includes a Boll commentary track, all of the “Raging Boll” boxing matches against critics and a commercial starring Troyer dressed as Indiana Jones. The full version of Postal 2 is also includes on its own disc.
Boll You Over?
Fat jokes, Nazi jokes, cop jokes, handicapped jokes. Nothing is sacred here. It’s all done very tongue-in-cheek with Boll himself portraying himself as the game-destroying, Nazi-ish filmmaker everyone claims him to be. And it’s actually funny.
Postal has some surprisingly decent cinematography especially for the first half hour of the movie which has a slightly washed out look that gives it a little artistic a hyper-realism. After that it goes back into a more standard movie appearance but by then you’ve seen a Foley’s penis, putting a proper end to any remaining realism.
Ward offers a decent performance demonstrating that, despite working with Boll on several projects, he hasn’t lost his acting chops or humorous sarcastic humor since Titus was canceled.
This is certainly not the worst or even the most disturbing movie I have ever seen. In fact, many scenes include enough self-mockery that they will actually elicit laughs. Boll being beaten down by Postal’s game producer for “ruining his game” (to which Boll perfectly responds, “I hate video games") may even make you applaud.
Surprisingly, Postal‘s not nearly quite as outlandish as it’s been promoted since all of the shocking elements are tempered with just enough awkward humor to make those moments seem comically OK. A plane crashing into a skyscraper? Not really the terrorist pilots’ faults. A bloody squib exploding from a little girl being gunned down at an amusement park? Strangely laughable. A nearly perfect George W. Bush-a-like skipping into the sunset with Osama Bin Ladin? Halarious. Foley scratching on screen and them immediately sitting on the toilet? A certainly disturbing moment that will elicit either an awkward hand-over-face giggle of disgust or a drunken knee slap.
Lightly Lick This Stamp
I’ve seen worse schlock airing on HBO at 2 a.m. with much more recognizable actors (nay, celebrities) and, very likely, bigger budgets. Postal is brainless and silly-stupid and it never denies it. Put your Boll hate aside for a few days, get a room full of friends over, serve enough alcohol and this will probably be *gasp* enjoyed.
It’s self-deprecating and enough to keep the humor going, while not nearly as vile and bloody as you might expect. Offensive, sure, but it’s entirely tongue-in-cheeky intentional and, for much of the movie, it kinda works and earns a few bonus points.
Unless you really need to have Postal 2 on disc or are some type of Boll film collector, you can definitely get away with a weekend rental since you’ll probably not need to watch this more than once in your life (maybe twice if you’re too drunk or, er, unable to recall things, at the first pass).
Read [Postal: The Movie] Read [New York Times] Read [Twitch Film]
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