Crimes
- Clumsily combining crude scatological humor with mawkish sentimentality
- Wasting Seth Green yet again
- Cynically pandering to its target demographic with cheesy '80s nostalgia, then throwing in some '70s nostalgia for good measure
Defenders: Director Steven Brill; actors Seth Green, Matthew Lillard, Dax Shepard, Ethan Suplee, and Abraham Benrubi
Tone Of Commentary: Alternately semi-earnest and irreverent. When not praising the sets, Green cracks wise, jokingly referring to the heavily edited film as a 92-minute movie with 17 hours of deleted scenes, and ragging on the clunky exposition, striking homoeroticism, mawkish dramatic moments, crappy use of Photoshop in prop photos, and rampant continuity errors, as well as his own performance. Brill who leaves after the first half-hour tries to steer the commentary toward the film, while Shepard, Lillard, and Green trade one-liners. Later, Shepard sarcastically says, "Forgive me, I just got sucked into the hot drama that is this film." At another point, he explains that he's only mocking Brill because they went on to become the very bestest of friends, and he describes them as like "two little gay boys in love." Unsurprisingly, the commentary suggests that the film was much more fun to make than watch; it's a kick-ass New Zealand rafting vacation masquerading as a movie.
What Went Wrong: Scenes were heavily improvised, re-shuffled, and re-written on the spot. Green concedes that a Star Wars bit he was extremely excited about just didn't work, and was cut down considerably. Many of the funniest scenes apparently got cut, leaving only unfunny ones.
Comments On The Cast: Co-star Bart The Bear is described as "cute," a "diva bastard," and a ferocious beast capable of ripping apart a tree with his paws. The similarly hulking, bear-sized Benrubi is praised as nice and a good kisser. Green professes to be "head over heels in love" with co-star Burt Reynolds.
Inevitable Dash Of Pretension: Green describes the look of the film as "grand," only semi-sarcastically praising an "amber-lit" push-in conveying that the "heroes' journey [is] about to begin."
The Commentary In A Nutshell: Shepard: "Climbing this rope, I farted."