So You Won't Have To: Blubberella

 For some reason, I decided to break the "no Uwe Boll" pact with myself. It's not the first time I've tried - as a fan of Jason Statham and Ron Perlman, I made it less than twenty minutes into In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, but I never bothered with House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, Bloodrayne, Postal, Far Cry, or any other garbage I'm forgetting. I'm not interested in Dr. Uwe Boll, his propensity for boxing internet critics, or the fact that he genuinely could care less that his video game adaptations are consistently derided by just about everyone. Even people I know who like one or two of Boll's films can't be bothered to watch more than two.

So why start with Blubberella? Let's call the "trainwreck" effect. If you're not familiar with the concept of Blubberella, let's take a moment to look at the trailer.



You might understand how the Cap'n could think that Blubberella was maybe not actually a real movie. The film was allegedly shot simultaneously with (and is supposedly a parody of) Boll's Bloodrayne: The Third Reich, which gave him an excuse to use all of his Nazi uniforms, locations... well, I'm not going to lie to you. I'll never watch Bloodrayne: The Third Reich, so this is going to remain conjecture until someone else does and comments.

Instead, let's focus on Blubberella, which is (sadly) a real movie, albeit barely. The film is self described as a "comedy," but I didn't laugh once. If you find a litany of "jokes" about fat people, interspersed with anti-Semitic and homophobic references, followed by even more fat jokes punctuated with intentional anachronisms funny, you might not hate Blubberella. But let's be real, folks: I'm reviewing this to answer any lingering curiosity you had about this film. A film that features a morbidly obese "heroine" who is constantly ridiculed by other characters and the director.

 Instead of devoting paragraphs to tearing this film apart, let's save all of us some time and let images from Blubberella tell you everything you need to know:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Get the idea? What that doesn't convey is the pointless dialogue or "comedic" sound effects (for example, when Blubberella pulls a roll of bread out of her coat, Boll uses a slide whistle! Hilarious!) Scenes don't so much end as they simply fade out in mid-sentence, and if the dated cell phone gags don't get you, perhaps the "Clapper" joke will. There are pot shots at movie critics, lazy pop culture references (including Precious - yes, that's what the above photo is).Boll even uses a music cue that rips off Europe's "The Final Countdown."

To compensate for this (I guess), Boll decides to make fun of the movie he's making while he's making it, by having characters say "Now, despite my inability to carry a scene," "the following scene is really boring," and so on. If we're meant to excuse a horrible movie because the director admits it's horrible, then I must have missed that part of parody protocol. Blubberella is more Meet the Spartans than Top Secret, but without the simple competency one needs to construct a film. It's a collage of scenes that barely have anything to do with each other, that begin and end for no apparent reason, and tend to resemble cutaways from Family Guy strung together for 83 minutes. When all else fails, Boll trots himself out on camera dressed as Hitler, then plays board games and has a heart to heart with Blubberella. It's just embarrassing.

 As usual, Clint Howard sums up Blubberella with a line from the film: "That's not extraordinary, that's bullshit!"

 Bonus picture: