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DVD Review: HAGGARD
Posted by Jay Spree on Mar 22, 2004, 14:08
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DVD Review: HAGGARD
Studio: Haggard Inc./Adio Entertainment
Distributor: Ventura
Note: All releases of this DVD are Region-free. However, the Canadian editions have been heavily censored (though not actually cut), and only the North American release reliably includes the Easter Egg. The Revolver Entertainment Group-distributed British PAL version lacks an anamorphic transfer, though it isn’t really noticeable. In addition, all versions of the film – including the re-released “Bam’s Uncensored Cut” – are the same runtime and contain the same scenes (although the Canadian release is still censored).
Guess who's back! Yep, it's old man Spree, fresh from a trip to the corner store to buy boiled sweets and bore local children with stories about how much better things were before the days of the internet, automobiles and Disney films.
My "semi-retirement" has been pretty hectic. As you may or may not be aware, the reason I had to resign as a full-time Smart Mark was to move down south to sleepy Woking, just outside London, to take a job on a security and counter-terrorism magazine. To make things more interesting, they offered the job to me at REALLY short notice, so I basically had to accept the job, find somewhere to live AND move there in three days. So between moving, settling in, getting acquainted with my new stomping grounds and ferrying stuff back and forth between homes old and new, I haven't had a hell of a lot of time for reviews. Still, I finally managed to finish writing this a couple of weeks ago and everything seemed to be back on track - then I fractured my wrist. Note to anyone who thinks they have to go to the bathroom so bad that they need to run to the can - it ain't worth it. Driving, writing, bathing, beating off - they all hurt like hell. It would've been better to piss myself; at least that would be dry by now.
But hey, we live and learn. The review's done and, either next weekend or the one after, you can expect a double-bill Jay Spree DVD bonanza with reviews of both Beyond The Mat: Special Edition and The Smashing Machine. I may be down, but I'm not out, baby. Before I sign off, I know there are a couple of people waiting to hear back from me, and I WILL reply soon, but seeing as I've been offline so much lately that I didn't even know it was WrestleMania last weekend, you'll have to bear with me clearing the backlog. That said, thanks to everyone who sent their kind words and well wishes - I know there are guys who have been following me since TheSmarks and even my WrestleWire days, so it means a lot. I also want to give a huge shout out to Alex Padrino, who's done an awesome job taking over the DVD reins here with the DVD Discharge - thanks for looking after my baby, baby. And now, enough ranting about me, more ranting about the DVD!
Best. T-shirt. Ever.
THE DOPE
It’s funny how things work out sometimes.
In the early 90s, lifelong camcorder whore, underachiever, skater punk and general showoff Brandon “Bam” Margera puts together a heavily music-infused video comprising of skateboarding, stunts and badly-acted skits. Since the video was originally intended to help promote his brother’s struggling West Chester garage band, CKY (Camp Kill Yourself), Bam titles the tape CKY and releases it to the underground-yet-rapidly-resurgent skateboarding scene. The video is a phenomenal success, and nothing but good things follow for the brothers Margera – the CKY band secure a recording contract, and the CKY video spawns a sequel… and another… and then finally, a TV series. Director/oddball Spike Jonze cuts together Bam’s CKY footage with stunts and grossout footage shot by Johnny Knoxville and the Big Brother collective, and the Jackass series is born. Without CKY, it likely never would have been (whether or not that statement is pejorative will depend on your fondness for men in thongs and faecally-infused humour).
Haggard - something for everyone.
Jackass goes on to enjoy enormous success, running for a full three seasons before finally getting taken off the air due to an abundance of lawsuits and a general exhaustion of creativity. Still, the phenomenon introduced the world to a cast of misfits and misanthropes, and even spawned a hugely successful feature film before finally giving up the ghost in 2002. In 2003, however, the cast largely disappears back into the obscurity from whence they came: Johnny Knoxville returned to his bit-part acting career, Wee-Man managed to land a co-presenter gig on an obscure extreme sports program, and Steve-O and Chris Pontius – unable to find legitimate employment with their resumes that boasted scrotum-stapling and prancing around in male bikinis – launched their Jackass-spinoff, Wild Boys that's currently airing on MTV. Knoxville managed to raise his Hollywood profile to a very limited extent, Steve-O managed to sell a few thousand of his DVDs but, generally speaking, they all had their 15 minutes and used them up before quietly going away.
Except for one Brandon Margera.
Duct-taping shitlogs to a garage door. For revenge.
Now a renowned professional skater, and possessing more than just the ability to stick a firework up his ass and light it, Bam’s stock has simply gone up and up. With a fourth volume in the CKY series, hundreds of thousands of dollars from skating and videogame endorsements, and newfound name recognition following the success of Jackass and his appearances in the Tony Hawk games, Bam was finally in a position to properly indulge his love of filmmaking. Somehow managing to befriend his idol Ville Valo (Jim Morrison-esque lead singer of his (and my) favourite band, HIM), Bam secured his first professional directorial jobs, directing two videos for the band that aired all over Europe. But after shooting international music videos, four skate/skit videos and numerous stunts for Jackass, there was one more feather Margera wanted for his cap: a full-length motion picture.
Enter Haggard.
THE KNOWLEDGE
How to describe this movie… well, I’m going to make a Kevin Smith analogy - and as I’m going to explain, that’s appropriate for quite a number of reasons.
NOT digital stuntmen.
Anyone who was reading my reviews way back in the glorious Scott Keith era (when this place was simply called thesmarks.com) might remember that I reviewed Clerks: The Animated Series. In trying to sum up the show I made the statement that, essentially, it really wasn’t important to explain what it was all about, because the only people who would want to buy it were the established fans who had already seen the director’s other work; nobody else would really be interested because of its inherent and self-inflicted nicheness. And, really, it’s the same with Haggard – anyone who’s seen the CKY tetralogy (or “quadrilogy”, as Fox erroneously insists) will already know the score, and anyone who doesn’t know what a CKY is probably won’t care. And what will stop anyone from trying to care - exactly as with Smith’s work - is Haggard’s insistence on using bizarrely obscure referential and self-referential humour. While this results in wonderful in-jokes for existing fans of the series, it also means that if you haven’t seen a bunch of other films you will not only fail to understand why a particular character is acting in a particular way, but also why a particular character acting in a particular way is supposed to be funny. I know that in-jokes and obscure references are cool and explaining the them isn’t but, at the end of the day, this really just serves as an in-built failsafe to prevent new viewers from being able to engage the film on any level. Which is why I made the point that, as long as Kevin Smith continues to make niche comedies based on obscure references, New Jersey, and core characters played by himself and his friends, his films would continue to be marginalised and under-perform commercially…
Which is all dangerously close to a Kevin Smith rant, and I fear those like the plague because they invariably result in an inbox full of venom from angry fanboys. What I’m basically trying to say is that, unless you are already a fan of CKY and Bam’s unique brand of humour (or unless you just enjoy watching really obscure and off the wall shit like Bolo The Brute), you may very well find this film totally inaccessible and unfunny.
Ryan Dunn: has anger issues.
From a story and plot point of view, the film is loosely based on the real life girl troubles of leading man Ryan Dunn. Our Random Hero has recently been dumped by his girlfriend of two years Glauren (played by Bam’s hottie girlfriend Jenn Rivell). Despite her being a total and utter slut that has been railed by almost the entire male population, he just can’t get over her, and the film revolves around Dunn’s desperate attempts to get revenge, then get back with her, and then get revenge again. Along the way we meet a cast of world-class oddballs – Dunn’s best friends Valo, the cool and reliable all-around top bloke (played, of course, by Bam), and Falcone, the acid-taking, movie-making, auto-fellating, Reverse-Microwave creating sidekick (played by Bam's right-hand man, Brandon DiCamillo). Then there’s Falcone’s cousin Raab, played by Raab Himself in full-on Key Key mode (again, this is one of those things that will only make sense to fans of the CKY series), the hardcore hair-swinging freak Hellboy (naturally played by Rake Yohn), and Ryan Dunn's bizarre, grape-eating landlord who dresses like Julius Caesar, Don Vito (Bam's real-life uncle). And of course, there are numerous appearances by virtually all of Bam’s buddies, including Tony Hawk, Brandon Novak, Mike Maldonado, Naked Dave and Phil and April Margera. Interestingly, despite Johnny Knoxville’s legitimate acting chops, the only non-CKY member of the Jackass collective to make a cameo in the film is Dimitry Eliaskovich, another filmmaker/cinematographer. Go figure.
"You picked the wrong mother fucker to fuck with!"
What makes Haggard great is the cast and their performances. Ryan Dunn isn’t the world’s greatest actor, but he’s an excellent straight man in a film full of madcap characters, and (undoubtedly due to the film being based on his real-life experience) he lends the protagonist a true sense of desperate, wounded tragedy. Likewise, Bam can’t really act, but since he wrote his character as the cooler-than-thou antihero and basically just plays himself, he’s perfectly passable. Really, the two standouts in this film are Jenn Rivell and Brandon DiCamillo. Jenn’s smouldering sex appeal is undercut by the fact that she (well, her character) is a loathsome slut, and she does an amazing job of portraying that girl we all know that is just so Goddamn hot, yet such a complete bitch. But, in all fairness, DiCamillo is the absolute star and comedic genius in this film. I am actually not that big a fan of the character-based skits in the CKYs, and more often than not I find DiCamillo’s over-the-top characters with stupid voices grating and cringeworthy. So I was more surprised than anyone to find his portrayal of Falcone to be the absolute highlight of Haggard. The man is simply and absolutely hilarious, thanks in no small part to his character’s bizarrely compelling “accent”, which is an insane cross between Jean-Claude Van Damme’s intonation and Jason Lee’s delivery. The result is that every line he delivers is pure comedic magic and, to top it all off, he is simply a master of ad-lib; the stuff this guy can spew out, stream-of-consciousness, while wearing a flat cap and a pair of swimming goggles and pantomiming two GI Joes fucking each other is truly astonishing.
"You know what time it is in hometown? Time to get down and dirty, big boy."
Of course, there’s a lot about the film that doesn’t work at all well – hell, there’s some parts of the film that flat out just don’t work. Everyone knows Bam’s penchant for skating, and the fact that he manages to lever it into everything he does – be it Viva La Bam, CKY, or Jackass: The Movie. But while it might be appropriate in the context of those shows, and while it is arguably necessary to demonstrate and foreshadow Valo’s skating ability in Haggard, it is not appropriate to suddenly stop the movie dead, halfway through, and induldge in a CKY-esque skating interlude - it completely breaks the flow of the film and flat-out takes the viewer out of the experience. It’s one point that even die-hard Margera fans generally agree upon, and the film would be infinitely stronger without it (although, given the involvement of Bam sponsor Adio in the picture, perhaps some degree of skateboarding was insisted upon). The other really nagging problem is the use of Bam’s friends as cast members. While one or two (such as Brandon Novak as the shady dealer who can hook you up with anything, sweetheart) genuinely shine in their roles, others just make the film hard to follow, particularly Naked Dave and Mike Maldonado; while they make for welcome in-jokes to CKY fans, they simply cannot act or deliver dialogue - when their characters are fed lines of exposition and you simply can’t make out what they’re saying, it makes subsequent scenes just plain hard to follow. And of course, like Kevin Smith’s New Jersey fixation, Bam’s West Chester-oriented references are often hard to keep track of – if you aren’t familiar with 15 North, Goosecreek or Wawa, prepare to be truly baffled at times.
Bam will turn to one of these men for life advice. Guess which one.
That’s not to say that the film is totally without merit. In fact, wacky characters and hilarious dialogue aside, the film is generally very well shot and features some innovative camerawork. Shot primarily by Bam’s cinematic cohort Joseph Frantz, Haggard makes extensive use of time-lapse photography, rapid cuts, bold, oversaturated colours and the patented skateboard-as-dolly cam. Obviously, being a Margera creation, a huge part of the film is the soundtrack. Haggard is as heavily tune-infused and music video-like as the CKY videos, featuring an amazing lineup of artists including CKY, Faithless, HIM, Iggy Pop, New Order, Orbital and Slayer. In the same way as you’d hear snippets of songs during Jackass that you would forever associate with skits and stunts, Haggard is loaded with aural memories that will make you want to go out and buy a shitload of new CDs (you will never again be able to hear Unanimated's “Life Demise” without picturing Ryan Dunn go apeshit in a coffee shop).
Ryan Dunn: has trouble with women.
Like Jackass, and to a greater extent CKY, Haggard totally polarises – you’ll either see it as a brilliant work of Bunuel-esque surrealism or you’ll think it’s complete shit. To work out whether or not you’ll get it, see if you find any of the following at all humorous:
- “You know what your problem is? You always want shit to stay the same. Well, I want to get out there. I want to play the field – of dicks.”
- “Whose shit is this?” "I got it from Don Vito. I stole it."
- “I will explain everything, I’ll let you know – you’ll be so much smarter. Girls are like a lake, you know. Like, you can jump right in, get in there, and then you’re all used to it and you think everything’s great. But come wintertime, that shit is fucking frozen, then you’re fucked. That’s why I know the difference: I always pull out.”
- “Look at that girl over there. She's reading a book, alone - if that's not an invitation to come over, I don't know what is.”
- “I suggest you go rub one out.” “I don’t have any material or anything.” “Maybe you could use, like, your own ass. Beat the fuck off to that or something.”
- “Get the hell away from my grapes, Goddamn kids.”
- "Screw this fire - let's go back to my place and fuck."
- (In Arnold Schwarzennegger voice) “Yeah, psyche, I'm going to fuck you baby, I just threw on the brakes now I'm right behind you.”
- “Shut up or I'm seriously going to kill your face, so hardcore.”
- “Watch your mouth, sweetheart.”
Haggard has already established itself as a great stoner movie (another thing it has in common with a Kevin Smith film), which may or may not be a good thing in your book. The fact is that this is a very unique, surreal, and at times impenetrable movie - that said, the more you watch it, the more it grows on you, and you soon reach a blissful state of enlightenment where everything makes sense and, furthermore, everything is funny. It is infinitely rewatchable, with or without the aid of a dimebag, and easily makes it into my top ten favourite “mindless fun” movies. Pure class.
THE DISC
Well, if you’ve played with any of the CKY DVDs, you’ll know exactly what to expect.
The disc is fairly standard fare, with a 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer – unless you opt for the British release, which is non-anamorphic. Not that you’ll really notice, or that it makes any difference to the viewing experience of this particular flick, but DVD is all about being technically anal. Sound-wise, Bam fans will undoubtedly be familiar with the pseudo-5.1 audio employed on the CKY: Infiltrate – Rebuild – Destroy DVD; the sound on this disc is a pretty basic mix, not a million miles away from the CKY series. So the voices and music are crystal clear, but the speaker/channel movement isn’t all that dynamic. Again, not that it matters for this particular film.
Chad Ginsburg's BOSS~! guitar.
One thing I have to say is this – BEWARE THE CANADIAN VERSION. If you thought that the Canadian penchant for randomly censoring WWF broadcasts was a little over the top, this will truly baffle you. While the American and British releases of the DVD are intact, the Canadian edition has big fat blurring (like the infamous NO LOGO shots in hip-hop videos) whenever there is an ass crack or simulated faeces. Which means that at least three scenes are a complete pain in the ass to watch, and the shitlog scene is virtually unviewable because the fatass blurs are so oversized that they start blurring out the actors’ faces (as well as their faeces). And of course, it completely renders a character called Naked Dave pointless. In one sense, I want to give props to the dude in Canada who decided just to censor the scenes rather than cut them out completely, but then I come to my senses and say “JESUS CHRIST MAN, IT’S CHOCOLATE SHIT AND NAKED DAVE, WHAT’S THE FUCKING PROBLEM?” So be warned about that, because most of the copies on Ebay (which is one of the few places where you can reliably pick up the disc) are Canadian.
Uncut versus cut version. Actually, maybe the Canadians are doing us a favour...
The menus are pretty cool, with full-length songs playing for each screen (which is the standard for Bam’s DVDs): HIM’s “The One” plays on the main menu, CKY’s “Shock and Terror” is the theme for scene selection, “Lonely Road” by Daniel Lioneye plays on the Music Videos menu, and another HIM track, “Don’t Close Your Heart” soundtracks the Special Features selection. So, in actual fact, you’re getting four complete songs as bonuses on the disc, which you really can’t sniff at as they're all pretty good. The menus are static and unanimated, which isn’t really that big a deal, but the Scene Selection menus look a little amateurish (particularly if, like me, you generally gauge the effort put into a DVD by whether or not the Scene Selection menus are animated). Each scene doesn’t even get a still image to represent it; instead, you get three pages of one-line descriptions of each scene. With the film divided into 52 (yes, fifty-two) chapters, it would be understandably over-the-top to provide images for each one, but that doesn’t stop navigating the chapters being both ugly and ungainly.
NOT from the making of.
The boxart is understated and not particularly spectacular, but the discart – which is basically just the coverart again – actually looks pretty cool and certainly stands out from the other 258 discs in Jay's DVD wallet #1. So, all in all, a pretty decent-looking disc that’s generally friendly and easy to get around.
DVDeal
Whatever you think about the movie itself, you certainly get a lot of bang for your buck as far as the DVD is concerned:
- Making Of “Haggard” (40:22)
- “Heartache every moment” music video by HIM
- “Chinese freestyle #2” music video by Brandon Dicamillo
- “Attached at the Hip” music video by CKY
- Body bag at Dump: Too Gnarly for Jackass
- Photo gallery
- Theatrical trailer
- Easter Egg: Bam and Jenn slutting it up
The Making Of Haggard is a full length… well, I wouldn’t call it a featurette as such, but it’s 40 minutes of BTS footage and reminiscing from the cast – it’s actually like a full-length version of the CKY:I-D-R making-of featurettes. It’s completely worth watching, with some truly hilarious moments that would be quite at home in the movie itself – DiCamillo’s utterly surreal passion for Western [cowboy] movies is sheer genius. There’s a lot of random footage and laughs included that make it feel, in many ways, like a mini-CKY. Most interestingly, and something that manages to illustrate far better than Haggard how talented a filmmaker Bam actually is, is the final ten minutes devoted to the tragic life of Brandon Novak, a former pro skater and close friend of Bam’s who threw everything away for heroine. Bam’s distanced, un-narrated, documentary-style segment on Novak is simply harrowing, and it’s made even more poignant by the fact that they start the Making Of goofing off and talking about the movie, then segueing into Chris Raab’s seeming addiction to alcohol that everyone laughs about, and then finally transitioning to Novak with his very real addiction that is taking his life away from him. The way Bam can compose ten minutes of film without a jump-cut or rack focus that still hit you right in the gut suggests that perhaps his greatest skills as a filmmaker are yet to be tapped.
I hope so Brandon. I hope so.
All of that said, while the Making Of is superb, the DVD still hurts from the lack of a commentary. And if you’ve listened to the Jackass: The Movie commentary, you’ll know that Bam and Ryan are more than capable of blabbing for a couple of hours, and that’s without DiCamillo, Raab Himself, Rake Yohn and others to interject.
The three music videos are kind of a mixed bag. “Heartache Every Moment” is a HIM video, but it’s not the actual HIM video – it’s a load of Haggard clips spliced together with footage of the band performing the song live at an Adio gig. Still a cool track, though. Bran’s "Chinese Freestyle #2" is… well, it’s not amazingly funny, and certainly isn’t a patch on the original "Chinese Freestyle" (from CKY2K), but it’s probably worth sitting through once. "Attached at The Hip" is one of the better CKY videos, as well as being a great song. Funny how Bam does a “movie version” music video (with all the film clips inserted) for the HIM song because he didn’t direct it, but the CKY video that he did direct is left untouched. Which is good, because movie versions of videos suck ass - just thought it was interesting is all.
When Jackasses go too far. "It's a body, it's a body!"
"Body Bag at Dump” is an awesome Jackass skit but, after you’ve seen it, it becomes pretty obvious why it never made the air – it’s one of the few Jackass or CKY bits where I thought that they might have gone a little too far. Not that it wasn’t funny as all hell or anything. The Photo Gallery is flat-out piss poor, with maybe six or seven pictures and none of them particularly interesting – just a waste of time. The 50-second trailer is cool for reliving a few memories, since it was the only sniff of the film that fans saw for about a year before Bam finally got off his ass and released it. The last extra is an Easter Egg and only appears to be on the American release of the DVD – it seems to have bitten the dust on the Canadian version along with everything else that was censored, and although people claim to have seen it on the British version I’ve yet to see it (including two copies I borrowed from friends and a rental copy from Blockbuster). Basically, if you want to see what Bam and Jenn get up to when they cut loose with half a dozen chicks, it’s worth checking out, but it’s probably not worth going out of your way for (not like the madness over the magic 5,000 copies of CKY4, anyway). In all, a pretty good set of extras, but not perfect by any means.
OVERALL
I’ve harped on and on about it, but Haggard really is something you either get or you don’t. All I can say is that if you’re at all a fan of Bam or the CKY series, chances are you’ll really, really dig it. It’s one of my favourite films ever and among my most treasured DVDs, so take that for what it’s worth. To be honest, it’s only $20 to decide for yourself whether the film is a work of pure genius or a pile of complete crap, so you may as well give it a try.
Separated at birth.
The disc boasts a killer Making Of documentary, six complete songs (two of which come cmoplete with music videos) and a naughty Easter Egg, but it’s still a little bit lacking in terms of extras (bearing in mind that Bam has been known to cram anything up to an hour of bonus footage onto his DVDs). All I would say is that you should stay the hell away from the Canadian version at all costs, because it’s been censored to hell and it doesn’t contain the Egg. Other than that, go for it.
Feature: ****
Extras: ***
Overall: ****
Jay $pree
Read my archives, biatch.
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