Tiresome Pottymouthing in Skiptracers

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Skiptracers
Directed by Harris Mendheim
Opens September 11, Village East

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More About

• Kevin Smith
• Jerry Clower
• Eagle Pennell
• Dresden
• Eastbound & Down

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Set in East Bufu, Alabama, from a mostly first-timer cast and tyro director, Skiptracers concerns the Trawick brothers, J.D. and Tucker, small-town bailbondsmen/manhunters, and their line-of-duty antics. The primary source of comedy is tiresome pottymouthing (the Kevin Smith model unleashes yet another indie Dresden of f-bombs) and justly obscure, possibly invented colloquiums à la "You think yer daddy's fartin' Franklins?" and "What in God's grassy ass . . . ?" Anyhow, J.D.'s competition, in business and Pop Warner football, is a pertly mustached creep, one in a gallery of untethered overactors mugging as comic grotesques, including a meth-'n'-mullet bail-hopper with coke-bottle glasses, a theater-queen deputy, and an oily preacher who couldn't feasibly hold down a congregation in any Southern county. Giving due credit, Skiptracers seems to be genuine homegrown product, but the only entertainment value here is in counting the continuity slip-ups. As drawl-inflected comedy goes, it's outdone easily by Jerry Clower monologues, Mama's Family, Eagle Pennell films, Eastbound and Down, ad infinitum. Aiming at a dead zone somewhere between the Blue Collar Comedy Tour folks buying off the truck-stop DVD carousel and big-city Big Buck Hunter ironists, it's a belly flop by any standard.