The Ballad of Straw Hat Sam
A hyper-crude animated film -- technically speaking and otherwise -- this effort from director Duke Ross shows promise, if not the best execution.
I’m actually perfectly OK with the ridiculously crude animation in “The Ballad of Straw Hat Sam.” If it looks like something created in the basic draw/paint app that comes with your computer, then layered over the top of some live-action backgrounds, that’s because it’s pretty much what it is.
I also have no beef with juvenile humor, gross antics and the like. And that Ross, who co-wrote the script with Rahul Barkley and Kristina Lynae, certainly ladles on generously.
Overall it feels like the very first episodes of “South Park,” but without the storytelling execution and finely tuned humor. But there’s promising stuff here, otherwise I wouldn’t bother.
The 45-minute movie, which I’m not sure if it’s correct to call it a long short or a short feature, is now available for rental on Amazon Prime Video.
It’s the sort of thing young filmmakers throw together with zero budget for their first movie to take to festivals and show to studios. As the saying goes, the only reason you make your first movie is so it gets enough notice they let you make your second movie.
It does feature one celebrity voice, Tommy Chong of Cheech & Chong fame as Bert the Sword Salesman, which was a nice get. Even if he only has a few lines.
The titular main character (voiced by Ross) is a roaming adventurer who has heard tell of the greatest bourbon ever made, The Angel’s Teat. Supposedly a man named Thaddeus Timmy brewed it up as a young man and then let it age for 80 years, and is now guarding it somewhere like an ancient knight protecting the Holy Grail.
In this quest Sam recruits Max, an aspiring writer he soon renames Bucket, and they go on a series of strange Monty Python-esque encounters with people like Gambling Gary, Rudy Riddle and Miss Whoop Whoop, an old lady with lobster claws who guards the Super Happy Fun Time Bridge in the middle of nowhere for vague religious reasons.
“I reject all the old gods and worship several lesbian possums!” she declares, and I’ll admit I chortled. That line also gives you a good micro taste of the sort of humor the movie relies upon.
A barely associated subplot has a pair of detectives following in their wake of destruction. This portion is regular live action, but rendered in black-and-white like a film noir, and the lead cop, Birdie (Jennica Anusua), talks like a hard-boiled gun moll while her wingman, Dennis (writer Barkley), secretly wishes they could drop the case so she could sexually humiliate him.
There’s plenty of violence including several splittings of skulls, one notable eye gouging, stabbings, shootings and a few other colorful deaths I’m sure I’m forgetting.
“The Ballad of Straw Hat Sam” looks amateurish, though I think the filmmakers meant for it to be that way, but sometimes also feels amateurish, which I doubt they intended. If you like really zany adult animation that at least doesn’t hang around too long, you might find it worth a cheap rental.