Big Helium Dog (1999)

Director:

Brian Lynch

Writer:

Brian Lynch (writer)

Genre:

Comedy

Tagline:

Now the Bible is the SECOND Greatest Story Ever Told!

Plot Keywords:

Bikini | Cult Favorite | Cancer | Independent Film

Cast

Matt Kawczynski	...	Charlie Osgood
Michael Linstroth	...	Ray Cross
Kevin Smith	...	Director
Kevin Heffernan	...	Phil
Michael Ian Black	...	Martin Huber
Lorene Scafaria	...	Chastity
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Pete Capella	...	High School Jock
Jay Chandrasekhar	...	Movie Producer (scenes deleted)
Damien Furey	...	Autograph Seeker
Ralph Lambiase	...	BHD Interviewer
Alyce LaTourelle	...	Law Bitch
Steve Lemme	...	Kendrick
Brian Lynch	...	Director's Assistant
Colleen Murphy	...	Mother
Vincent Pereira	...	Cigarette Fairy
Richard Perello	...	Bartender
Brian Quinn	...	Vance
Blanchard Ryan	...	Beautiful Dancer
Erik Stolhanske	...	Father Joeb
Bryan W. Strang	...	Carl Dunlop
Kelli Strang	...	Little Susie
Kris VanCleave	...	Immense Gay Trucker

Runtime:

89 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

USA:Unrated

Filming Locations:

New Jersey, USA

Company:

Rayisdead co.

Trivia:

Ben Affleck agreed to take a role in this film based on reading the script while on the set of Chasing Amy. However due to his schedule with Armageddon, he had to drop out of the production.

Quotes:

Martin Huber: I don't know if you're retarded or just willfully malicious.

This was a sad little movie

Did somebody, maybe me, forget to push my laugh button before ``Big Helium Dog'' began? It's a comedy, and I know people who think it's a funny one, and intellectually I can appreciate some of the stuff they're trying to do--but of course intellectual appreciation is deadly to comedy, which needs to originate at a more elemental level of the being, and arrive at the mind only after the laughter begins. On that more visceral level, I found it less a comedy than a curiosity.

The title, "Big Helium Dog", refers to expensive bad loud big budget Hollywood movies and I guess this movie is supposed to satirize those types of movies, but it feels more like a bad episode of Saturday Night Live on acid. It has an extremely low budget and unlike other more talented directors Brian Lynch cannot make it look like anything other than an extremely low budget movie. In fact, it plays like it was directed as a do-it-yourself project, following instructions that omitted a few steps, and yet the movie has some charm. Michael Ian Black is the engine that drives the movie and he does a good job at it, but he is not enough to save it from the pits of comedy hell.

There is a plot, which somehow arrives at a conclusion, but the movie doesn't tell a story so much as move from one 'skit' to another. I felt they were too busy being hip and ironic to connect at the simpler level where comedy lives. They were brought down by their own self-protective devices. It's not cool to seem to want to be funny, and so the modern strategy is to adopt the pose that you are funny by not seeming to want to be funny. The audience laughs because the performers are being hip by trying to be funny without seeming to try to be funny. Thus everybody has an irony orgy and goes home, if not satisfied, at least unexposed as unhip.