Out of all the news coming out of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, there was one bit of information that stuck out, like, well, a farting corpse: The premiere of Swiss Army Man, a.k.a. “Daniel Radcliffe’s farty boner corpse movie,” which reportedly had people walking out in droves from its initial screening. The A.V. Club’s A.A. Dowd caught it at a late-night showing later in the week, and said that it was actually pretty watchable, with stars Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe fully committing to the movie’s totally bananas premise. To wit:
The easy elevator pitch on Swiss Army Man is that it’s Cast Away meets Weekend At Bernie’s. But such a description hardly accounts for the Stephen Chow-worthy moments of CGI slapstick, the body horror played for insane laughs, or the way this very strange movie frequently flirts with going indie-movie maudlin on our asses, before another loud blare of escaping gas snaps us back to crazy town.
And just in case you thought he was kidding about the “indie-movie maudlin” part, the first trailer for the film sports the type of uplifting indie-rock score one generally associates with bearded collectives who dress like forest animals on stage. (The truth is even more precious: Composed by Atlanta-based beardos Manchester Orchestra, the song was apparently performed by Dano and Radcliffe themselves.)
It also boasts the baffling tagline, “There are seven billion people on the planet. You might be lucky enough to bump into the one person you want to spend the rest of your life with.” It’s unclear whether that refers to the relationship between Dano’s bearded castaway Hank and Radcliffe’s dead-ish Manny, or Hank’s longing for dream girl Sarah (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Either way, you can finally see Dano ride Radcliffe’s body like a methane-powered jet ski, something that we’re sure has been keeping you all up at night.
Swiss Army Man farts its way into theaters on June 17.