MoveVIZ: Let's Go to Prison (2006)

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Let's Go to Prison (2006)

I saw this movie awhile back and had forgotten about it until recently, when I saw Dax Shepard in another film. I found this movie to be fucking hilarious! If you like gallows humor that is slice-and-dice funny, no pun intended, then you need to take a look at "Let's Go to Prison". Do not expect a formulaic film; you never know what's going to happen next. The cast is top notch all the way. Words escape me in doing a description justice, again no pun intended, so I found a review that does a good job of it. It follows:

The Prison Movie with a Shank, Not an Axe

By NEIL GENZLINGER of The New York Times
Published: November 18, 2006

The movie’s called “Let’s Go to Prison,” and its poster consists of a close-up of a bar of soap in a shower, so of course you’re expecting a crass, brainless film, a frat house behind bars. It takes a while to realize that this is actually a sly, very funny comedy, one that stays admirably deadpan every time you think it’s about to veer into gross-out territory.

Not that it forgoes a shower scene; there are several. But the director, Bob Odenkirk, and the writers — Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon and Michael Patrick Jann — all have plenty of comedy on their résumés, and they seem to have learned that restraint is funnier than excess. The camera operators too: there is much showering but little forbidden flesh.

Dax Shepard, in both his acting and his voice-over, is wonderfully droll as John, a petty criminal who is peeved at the judge who kept putting him away. By way of retaliation, he helps nudge the judge’s son, the tightly wound Nelson Biederman IV (Will Arnett), into prison, then purposely has himself arrested so he can join him there. His plan is to make Nelson’s life miserable, and for a while he does, but of course things ultimately take an unexpected turn. More important, Mr. Shepard and Mr. Arnett, though playing polar opposites and mortal enemies, make a dandy comic duo.

The prize, however, goes to Chi McBride as a large fellow who leads the prison’s black gang and has a taste for Chuck Mangione‘s music and prison-style lovin’. His character’s name is Barry, and if that suggests a certain dim-the-lights soul singer, it’s no accident; this is a jailhouse thug of a decidedly different sort.

In fact, the whole movie is that way: it serves up the characters and situations you’d expect from a prison comedy but then plays them with wry understatement. All such comedies, for instance, must have dining hall humor, usually ending in a food fight, but this one delivers its version in a tidy five words. When Nelson asks an orderly what it is that he’s dishing up, the man says simply: “That’s meat; that ain’t meat.”

“Let’s Go to Prison,” which draws on the book “You Are Going to Prison” by Jim Hogshire, ultimately has to resort to an old and unconvincing gimmick to resolve its story. For most of the way, though, it adheres to the description that the prison warden (Dylan Baker, very amusing in a small role) gives of himself after delivering a scatology-inflected welcoming address to arriving inmates. “I have,” he says, “a notoriously dry sense of humor.”

“Let’s Go to Prison” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian), mostly for language.

Directed by Bob Odenkirk; written by Robert Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon and Michael Patrick Jann, based on the book “You Are Going to Prison” by Jim Hogshire; director of photography, Ramsey Nickell; produced by Marc Abraham, Matt Berenson and Paul Young; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 84 minutes.

WITH: Dax Shepard (John Lyshitski), Will Arnett (Nelson Biederman IV), Dylan Baker (Warden) and Chi McBride (Barry).

Labels: black comedy, film, prison