Postal

Uwe Boll has often been considered one of the world’s worst living filmmakers. I think this gives the German director of video game adaptations too much credit. The fact of the matter is that Boll is simply extraneous. Regardless of how many boxing matches he challenges his critics to, his body of work plainly doesn’t matter. And with 2007’s Postal, his insignificance has never been more unmistakable.

Postal finds Boll once again performing a lobotomy on a video game, mining the depths of society for material with which he thinks he can work. The video game version first came out in 1997, with a better known sequel in 2003. With the to-do over Grand Theft Auto and similar shoot-em-up “edgy” video games infusing the gamer market, it is indeed debatable to surmise that Postal carries any clout.

But Uwe Boll is steeped in worthlessness and obliviousness, so the move makes sense. The plot is based on Postal 2, with Zack Ward starring as The Postal Dude. The Postal Dude lives in Paradise City, which is a town steeped in degeneracy and violence. After putting up with what we’re supposed to believe is an intolerable amount of crap, The Postal Dude conspires with Uncle Dave (Dave Foley), who happens to be a cult leader, to steal a shipment of “hilarious” dolls.

There is, of course, a problem. The Taliban and Osama bin Laden (Larry Thomas) also want the dolls because they’re planning to use them to poison Americans with the bird flu. There is a face-off at a German theme park in Paradise to retrieve the dolls, Vern Troyer stars as himself, and Uwe Boll attempts to show the world that he understands his own jokes (he doesn’t).

That’s the movie.

Boll’s doggedness to assert that his movie is very distasteful simply rings hollow. In the day and age of the Internet and limitless sources for immorality, are shock comedy movies really all that scandalous anymore? Boll floats the idea that Bush and bin Laden are best of friends, nudging his spectators in the ribs with clichéd setups like the film’s closing sequence as proof of how “edgy” the whole thing is. But it’s not. And the much discussed opening sequence involving 9/11 terrorists isn’t edgy either. Worst of all, it’s not amusing.

Part of the reason Postal isn’t funny is because none of the cast members appear to give a shit. Foley phones it in and his purportedly uproarious nude scene is as dreary as possible, with obligatory toilet sounds integrated just to make sure we get the point. Ward as The Postal Dude is just flat out dull, even stumbling over his lines a few times and walking around like he has no direction. Hell, he doesn’t have any…

The performances can only be blamed for so much of this crud, of course. It is Boll’s baby, after all, and together with Bryan C. Knight he’s penned something so catastrophically inconsequential and unfunny that most of his other films top it by default. He has told people that Postal is the movie he’s always wanted to make and that it’s a film he finds funny, which is most important. Wonderful for him, sure, but that doesn’t explain why he’s elected to share his passé absurdity with us.

Boll’s aim with Postal was perceptibly to go for the jugular, but with so many misfiring jokes and inane gags, it’s safe to say he missed the mark a great deal. Not only is the movie not humorous, but it doesn’t matter.

While Boll might imagine his film to be nasty and crude, most people with an Internet connection and a fit sense of inquisitiveness will simply find it laborious and old-fashioned. Postal’s worst crime has nothing to do with being odious or obtuse. Instead, Uwe Boll and his little movie experiment ought to be locked away for being unreservedly meaningless.

Trailer: