To be fair to this film it actually does open with some promise; it draws us into the protagonists world and does start to help us to be able to identify with him somewhat. However, once the first few minutes are out of the way it just becomes crazier and crazier and more and more surreal.
After establishing Stretch (Patrick Wilson) as a down on his luck pathetic figure the film then flits and bangs around all over the place - complete with lame cameos from David Hasselhoff and Ray Liotta. Their cameos may have actually improved the picture if they'd have been funny and/or if they'd have at least had a trace of self-awareness about them. Aside from the dumb cameos, the first half of the film lacks any real focus and takes an awful long time setting up the plot (which in itself was mind-boggling given how slim the material is with this film).
I also couldn't shake this feeling that the picture was also trying way too hard at times to be funny; Chris Pine's performance is very good here and he is funny (for about 5 minutes), but his over-the-top antics actually start to become annoying very quickly. Ed Helms (who was excellent in the Hangover franchise) is given the thankless role as being some kind of dead adviser/conscience character for Stretch - again although I can't fault Helms performance his character annoyed the hell out of me and I never felt that he was necessary to the story.
Even when the film does get going it's rather generic plotting was never strong enough to hold my interest. With regards to plotting then one could also address the vague and silly sub plot regarding Stretch and the PinkMinx - this felt like a dumb thing to tag on to the story and although the mystery (I'll use this term lightly) to this sub plot is revealed I never really cared for it to be honest because I never felt that I was given a reason to.
Although the film clearly tries to be funny I just found it a little too wacked out, ridiculous and rather stupid, but sadly all of this came at the expense of anything remotely funny or interesting. All in all, it's a roundly poor effort.
After establishing Stretch (Patrick Wilson) as a down on his luck pathetic figure the film then flits and bangs around all over the place - complete with lame cameos from David Hasselhoff and Ray Liotta. Their cameos may have actually improved the picture if they'd have been funny and/or if they'd have at least had a trace of self-awareness about them. Aside from the dumb cameos, the first half of the film lacks any real focus and takes an awful long time setting up the plot (which in itself was mind-boggling given how slim the material is with this film).
I also couldn't shake this feeling that the picture was also trying way too hard at times to be funny; Chris Pine's performance is very good here and he is funny (for about 5 minutes), but his over-the-top antics actually start to become annoying very quickly. Ed Helms (who was excellent in the Hangover franchise) is given the thankless role as being some kind of dead adviser/conscience character for Stretch - again although I can't fault Helms performance his character annoyed the hell out of me and I never felt that he was necessary to the story.
Even when the film does get going it's rather generic plotting was never strong enough to hold my interest. With regards to plotting then one could also address the vague and silly sub plot regarding Stretch and the PinkMinx - this felt like a dumb thing to tag on to the story and although the mystery (I'll use this term lightly) to this sub plot is revealed I never really cared for it to be honest because I never felt that I was given a reason to.
Although the film clearly tries to be funny I just found it a little too wacked out, ridiculous and rather stupid, but sadly all of this came at the expense of anything remotely funny or interesting. All in all, it's a roundly poor effort.