February 2, 2008
Talk about a movie drowning in its own swampy mess!
I jokingly call for and strongly petition Bigfoot to be removed from this movie, for heaven’s sake, because Bigfoot does not deserve this film. That wasn’t funny, was it? Well, neither is this movie!
This may be the worst film to have a Sasquatch in it since the biker flicks made for the drive-in outdoor theaters during the 1970s.
The reviews are in and they are not pretty.
MSNBC captured it straightforwardly in their review’s headline, “Strange Wilderness scrapes bottom,” and then their subheadline, “Screenwriters seem to have no time for concepts such as ‘plot,’ ‘characters’.”
Their film critic Alonso Duralde begins his column with:
February may be too early to start thinking about year-end lists, but frankly, I’ll be shocked if I see 10 movies in 2008 that are worse than “Strange Wilderness,” a movie so wretched that its studio refused to put its logo on it. (Paramount Pictures is the guilty party here, incidentally.)
More from MSNBC.
Variety’s review by Joe Leydon, entitled simply “Strange Wilderness,” agrees with a point I mentioned about what weekend this film is being released:
Obviously the product of minimal effort by all parties involved, “Strange Wilderness” is a slovenly, slapped-together stoner comedy about producers of a ratings-challenged wildlife TV series who go looking for Bigfoot. That Paramount is dumping a pic so clearly aimed at the young male demographic on Super Bowl weekend — without press screenings, of course — speaks volumes about the studio’s expectations for theatrical biz. (The 2006 copyright date says even more.) Outlook for homevid sales and rentals isn’t much brighter.
More from Variety.
At Toronto’s Dose, Jay Stone muses:
There’s an audience for a certain kind of stoner humour — and I know you’re out there; I can hear your brain cells dying — that will be in blissed-out heaven over Strange Wilderness, a so-bad-it’s-bad comedy that unfolds with the slow senselessness of druggy incoherence. You don’t have to be high to see this movie, but the only other alternative seems to be actual unconsciousness.
More from Dose.
Cinema Blend’s Josh Taylor continues the blood-letting by saying:
Steve Zahn stars in a film that’s supposed to be about the crew of a wildlife television show, but looks more like a bunch of guys wandering around in the plastic foliage of Disney’s Jungle Cruise ride pretending to see monkeys. Strange Wilderness is the worst sort of comedy, the kind that doesn’t even try.
More from Cinema Blend.
You get the picture.
Hopefully, Strange Wilderness will move on quickly, and open up more room in cryptofiction history for better Bigfoot and Yeti cinema. Hey, thinking about the Yeti fighting scene forthcoming in the next Mummy movie, for example, is more fun than dwelling on Strange Wilderness.
You may have seen Yeti and Lara Croft in comics and collectible figurines, but soon, will she too be battling Abominable Snowmen in a movie?
If there has to be hairy hominoids in cinema, let us exit quickly from this awful Paramount disaster and hold out some hope, once again, to the Yetis in the snows.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Filed under Abominable Snowman, Bigfoot, Breaking News, Cinema News, Comics, Cryptid Cinema, Cryptofiction, Cryptomundo Exclusive, Cryptotourism, CryptoZoo News, Cryptozoologists, Cryptozoology, Movie Monsters, Pop Culture, Replica Cryptia, Reviews, Sasquatch, Yeti