AT last: Uwe Boll has made his first intentionally funny film.
Boll, the German director of shlocktastic video-game-themed movies, seems to be relishing the current Internet campaign to get him to cease and desist. He earns more votes with a War on Terror satire whose opening scene sets a new standard in tastelessness.
Two hijackers bicker about how many virgins are actually being set aside for them in heaven, suspecting that they might get swindled and thus would be better off steering the plane to the Bahamas. The scene underlines the still-amazingly moronic nature of the belief system of Islamist fanatics, but it’s amusing only to a point – and that point is when Boll cuts to the plane smashing into the World Trade Center.
Boll goes on to show Dave Foley – sweet Dave Foley, of “NewsRadio”! – using the toilet right before our eyes. He’s a homegrown religious nut, a charlatan cult leader who, along with some top-heavy female commandos out of a Russ Meyer movie, gets caught up in a mission to find Osama bin Laden, who is hiding in plain sight at an American management seminar about mastering those alpha-male leadership skills.
Being intentionally offensive and occasionally funny in its gonzo “Naked Gun”-style tactics, “Postal” strikes me as marginally superior to Morgan Spurlock’s merely boneheaded “Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?” But that’s like saying Moe is smarter than Curly.
POSTAL
Return to sender.
Running time: 99 minutes. Rated R (raunchy humor, profanity, violence). At the Cobble Hill Cinemas, Brooklyn.