The new trailer for Jared Hess’ latest movie, Don Verdean, sees the Napoleon Dynamite director operating in his usual format: good comic performers clad in unflattering glasses, trading self-serving dialogue that sounds like it was Google translated from another, weirder world. In this case, the deluded buffoon at the movie’s center is Sam Rockwell (returning, along with Jemaine Clement, from Hess’ roundly ignored Gentlemen Broncos), playing a religious archaeologist who finds himself trying to pass off counterfeit Biblical artifacts, like an ersatz Holy Grail.
Rockwell and Clement are joined by Danny McBride, Amy Ryan, and Will Forte—operating in his always-welcome “villainously prissy” mode—but it remains to be seen whether Hess (and his wife and co-writer, Jerusha) can deliver a film that deserves the confidence that all these incredibly talented comic actors he keeps recruiting seem to think that it’ll inspire.