Snark, Critic and Pop!

A quick perusal of the world wide interweb leads me to conclude that there are precious few attempts to properly review the Uwe Boll film Blubberella.  I don’t blame anyone who threw their hands up and said, “nah,” or just said it stunk a skunk on toast.  I understand.  I just saw Blubberella.  I review movies frequently.  I searched for other reviews in a desperate attempt to understand what I had just experienced.

In my mind, I’m trying to think of how to categorize or describe in some way director Uwe Boll’s opus Blubberella. It’s tough, but I’ll try:

To understand Blubberella you have understand Bloodrayne: Third Reich – a tall order. A while ago I reviewed Uwe Boll’s Bloodrayne: Third Reich. B:TR was a bad movie. Not fun/bad, but joyless, soul-suckingly unwatchable bad. Bloodrayne 3 surrounded a sexy half human/half vampire helping the Resistance battle supernatural Nazis during World War II.

Bloodrayne: Third Reich and Blubberella were filmed at the same time using the exact same sets, storyline, and cast. Well, mostly the same cast. The main difference is the hot, sexy Bloodrayne (Natassia Malthe) is replaced by plus size comedienne Lindsay Hollister. You may remember Lindsay Hollister as the large gal who danced with Steve Carrell in the 2008 movie version of Get Smart.

If you think I’m being insensitive and insufficiently politically correct by referring to Lindsay as “plus size” or “large gal,” I implore you to never watch Blubberella. It’ll make your PC head explode.

Just about every stereotypical, offensive thing that could be said to an overweight woman is said, with glee. Blubberella is seldom seen without food in hand, and when she is generally on the hunt for food. Or for men. The gravitationally superior (as I believe is the proper, politically correct term for the fatties) are not the only group tweaked. Blubberella tweaks the holocaust and jews (a caption identifies Blubberella as residing in a “Jew-y part of town”). There is a flamingly gay character (William Belli) who says the most outrageous, offensive, and often hysterical things.  There is a hideously unfunny scene with a while, male character in blackface and drag parodying “Precious” — it’s humorous that someone thought of doing this, but astounding that they did it, filmed it, and put it in their movie.

Other than being vile and offensive, Blubberella is often pretty doggone funny. It’s astounding that these were the same people who made Bloodrayne: Third Reich, which is thoroughly wretched. If I had to guess, the filming process was that the filmmakers shot the “straight” scene in Bloodrayne and then replaced the hot gal with the big gal and immediately re-shot the scene as a madcap, quasi-improvised, self-deprecating parody.

There’s a scene with Blubberella surfing the internet – in the 1940s – and the computer is black and white. There’s a scene where our heroes are leading Jewish concentration camp survivors through the forest, and among their numbers is a guy in a full size fish costume. The “fish” is never acknowledged or highlighted, even when he falls from the line and flops on the ground.  There’s the dream sequence with Blubberella playing Risk with Hitler, as portrayed by director Uwe Boll. 

I don’t know if I can summarize or properly analyze Blubberella the movie.  It’s terrible.  It really is horrendous.  But on a late, Friday night with some friends, it made us laugh.  Sometimes with it, sometimes at it.  Sometimes I laughed because I couldn’t believe this was actually produced and released to the world. 

While I enjoy watching bad movies that are entertainingly bad, comedies are an exception. Unfunny comedies are just plain unfunny. This may be the exception. Blubberella may in fact be the first comedy that actually succeeds in entertaining despite being terrible. If “comedy” is the right word for it. Which I’m not sure that it is.

Blubberella is like the world’s largest DVD Special Feature from Bloodrayne: Third Reich.  The prank the filmmakers played on each other and their fans.  It’s wholly more entertaining than B:TR too.