Yoga Hosers

Year: 2016
Genre: Comedy
Directed: Kevin Smith
Stars: Lily-Rose Depp, Harley Quinn Smith, Adam Brody, Harley Morenstein, Justin Long, Austin Butler, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, Tyler Posey, Tony Hale, Natasha Lyonne, Haley Joel Osment, Vanessa Paradis, Genesis Rodriguez, Johnny Depp
Production: SModcast Pictures

Yoga Hosers is to film what dirty outdoor bum f***ing is to hygiene. To say this film is an insult to bratwurst, yoga, beavers, French Canadians, demon worship, Jean Chretien and the province of Manitoba would be an understatement comparable to calling the Hindenburg a bad day in New Jersey. Years ago, someone must have approached director Kevin Smith with a Brewster's Millions (1985)-type proposition only instead of wasting money he's trying to get his fans to die of embarrassment en mass. The man has constructed a personal brand that embodies and cashes in on the aloof, dropout, knower-of-all, master-of-none, slacker quintessence that made Comic-Book Guy from the Simpsons (1989-Present) such a fan favorite. Then like a common drug dealer, the man sold his brand to damaged people, made a tidy profit and probably sits in a cozy man-cave of obsolescence cluttered with Batman memorabilia, laughing as the good s**t he used to sling is being cut with baking soda.

The thing in Yoga Hosers that loosely resembles a plot, revolves around best friends Colleen (Lily-Rose Depp) and Colleen (Smith). They kinda-sorta have a band, kinda-sorta have family lives and kinda-sorta work at a convenience store called the Ah-2-Zed because...Canada. Their existence as terminally flighty, yoga-loving, teenage girls is completely upended when a dark presence threatens to...you know what, I can't. I really can't. Going over the plot in my head and attempting to regurgitate it like a half-eaten poutine is giving me an embolism. Let's just say going over the story beat by beat, would have the same effect on you the reader as the Ark of the Covenant.

This movie makes no sense. It doesn't make sense from a narrative perspective, it doesn't make sense from a character perspective, it don't make sense from a marketing perspective or really any perspective that requires you to, you know, have eyes, ears and a sense of self. Smith is clearly gunning for the apparently coveted "so-bad-it's-good" slot of your film-going memory that I'm surprised he didn't include a tobacco spitting talking cupcake. And no, Smith himself playing the army of Nazi sausages that are unceremoniously dismembered throughout the film, does not make me feel better about it.

Seriously, you're the wurst!

The thing about Smith's more than half-over True North trilogy is it throws itself into the realm of badness and asks you to love it, like a fussy, crap-covered toddler who tipped over its training potty. It tries oh so hard to be the next The Room (2003) completely ignoring the fact that not even The Room wanted to be The Room! To accomplish this, the movie hobnobs every tired lounge-club comedian stereotype of entitled Millenials and polite Canadians and mingles them with Nazi scientist cliches, tacky monster effects, View Askew cameos and the jokes your dad laughed at in Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993).

And another thing while we're on the subject of living, breathing examples of eye-rolling lethargy. Kevin Smith can't write; there I said it. Sure he has a penchant for snappy dialogue but there’s way more to good writing than characters spewing lines with the cadence of a drumline. Good writing needs character arcs, themes, foreshadowing, mood, structure, all the stuff that doesn't lend itself to a Clerks (1994) callback. Smith sacrifices all that in this film so he can feel a sense of accomplishment, being a 47-year-old man writing two fourteen-year-old's like they're out of a Diablo Cody story. That and to have an opportunity to chew the fat with Johnny Depp for three pointless movies.

Yoga Hosers is inept on an almost molecular level. It literally has nothing to offer even the most die hard of Kevin Smith fans, except quite loudly turning the phrase, "wasted potential" from a pseudo-badge of honor, to shriek-level mortification. Quite frankly it's a travesty. If this movie were personified in any way, I'd dunk its face in a shallow pool of water until the bubbles stopped.

Final Grade: F