Something different here – about an Appalachian community, centered on a Pentecostal, snake handling church. Oh but Jim Gaffigan was in it – surely it’s a comedy, right? WRONG! This crock of shit was supposed to be serious. Can Gaffigan pull off a serious role? We shall soon find out.
This hot mess started with a girl Mara, played by Alice Englert (don’t bother checking, you’ve never heard of her) and a guy out in the woods. It appeared they had something going on. The guy, clean shaven with short dark hair, was Augie, played by Thomas Mann (you have seen this guy). Butsoon after in the movie, Mara had a boyfriend Garrett, played by Lewis Pullman. He looked very familiar, and as I often do, I liked to speculate that an actor was related to a more famous one he/she resembled. Usually, I am wrong. But this time, I nailed it. He looked like a mix of a young Bill Pullman and John Cusack. I thought it was possible he was related to one of those actors, and, bingo – Bill Pullman’s son! YES!! The king of the guessers!
Anywho, Mara’s father was the pastor in the church of snake kooks. As you all know by now, I hate clichés. And here we go again: hey this guy was a southern/western, small town pastor, so, he had to always wear an old-timey leather vest… ridiculous! The character’s name was Lemuel. Lemuel? What kind of hokey Appalachian fake name is that?
So back to Augie, his mother Hope was played by Olivia Colman, CBE, a British actress you’ve seen in many movies. She did a hick accent very well! Another of my iron-clad rules of movies – Brits can do Americans, Americans can’t do Brits for shit. Works every time. And who was Augie’s father? Jim Gaffigan! But you don’t even know it until well into the movie. You first see him at a church service, where he danced around like a fool. II soon realized he was only occasionally in this movie – he barely said a word except for a quick three word comment. Then the game begins – his dialogue was so infrequent (and in a bad southern accent) – I started counting to see how many words he was going to utter in this entire movie. I got to twenty-seven words half-way through the movie until finally there was a scene where he had multiple, full sentence lines, and sadly, I lost count. Hey Jim, you earned your keep! But his character didn’t fly – a pale New Yorker with a bum beard cast as an uber-religious snake handling church hick? Every time I saw him, I expected a joke, or at least, a high pitched soliloquy re-assuring us that this whole performance was a farce. But it never happened. Maybe Jim needs to supplement his Hot Pockets spokesman pay? Oh, what a burn! Speaking of getting burned, if you watch this movie – BURNED!! This flick gets one burnt matchstick out of ten.