Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
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| WARNING: This review may contain spoilers. |
Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil was one of those out-of-nowhere films that immediately grabbed my eye for more than one reason. While I may not look it, I grew up in a redneck family, but still lived close enough to town that the farm was met with more updated technology. After learning of the film's plot, having Tucker and Dale going up against a group of college students who think they are killers, both the role reversal of today's modern Slasher film involving hillbillies and teenagers being swapped, as well as just the main characters not being the traditional college or high school teenager, really caught me by surprise. It took a while to get to this film, but was this a movie well worth the wait?
The film starts off like your traditional Slasher flick. Much of the earlier segments involves a group of college students in a van heading out to the woods for a weekend getaway. The students are your traditional cannon fodder, and anyone with half a brain cell will immediately start to not like the characters, but no time is wasted establishing two things: They have weed, and they forgot beer. After a near collision with two men pulling out onto the road in front of them, they stop at a local gas station to get some beer. This is where Tucker and Dale are introduced more than the two men in the beat up truck, finding Dale (Tyler Labine) staring at Allison (Katrina Bowden), one fo the females from the college kid group. So far the story builds up that these kids are simpletons just out for a good time in the cheesy, generic campy Slasher fashion, almost templates stolen from Friday the 13th, but dumbed down more.
But following all of this, you start to get to knock our two heroes. Tucker (Alan Tudyk) starts talking to Dale as he stares at the college kids, going on about how beautiful the girls are and how he'd never get a girl like that. Tucker convinces him to go talk to the girls, and for some reason decides to carry a giant sickle with him, obviously one for farming, and due to how nervous he is he acts poorly on his advance to smile and laugh, coming off really creepy and stalkerish instead of the kind-hearted bumbling man he was just portrayed to be. From here, the two decide to go to their new vacation home, a cabin that they pulled their money together to buy. Hilarity ensues when the two are pulled over by a police officer, trying to hide the beer they're drinking and it looks like a sexual scene involving Tucker and Dale, but this leads to foreshadowing that the cabin is in an area that has a bad history, which is later explained as the place of the Memorial Day Massacre, an event later even shown in graphic detail a few times.
Eventually more of the college student characters begin to develop, but not many really end up being anyone you care to know. Chad (Jesse Moss), however, clearly has a bit of an attitude, and becomes one of the main players to watch. He may look like Drake Bell from Drake & Josh, but he clearly pressures the others into doing what he wants, and clearly has an interest in Allison. This is pushed forward thanks to a scene between the two behind the truck where he tells he she's better than everyone else, and that he is too, trying to flatter her in an intimidating manner. Allison leaves while the others are off going to skinny dip in the lake by the cabin that Tucker and Dale just purchased, and who happen to be out on fishing. They watch as they start to strip down and hop in, but notice Allison on a larger rock, slowly removing her clothes. Tucker tells Dale to be quite, but he doesn't. This startles Allison, she falls, hits her head, and the misunderstandings begin. The students run off as the two shout out that they have their friend, and the students think Tucker and Dale are kidnapping her, when in reality they are trying to help her, eventually taking her back to the cabin not knowing why they were running away instead of coming to her aid.
From here, the misunderstanding continue to grow, and despite the amount of violence and death, it's just hysterical to watch these kids die, whether you want them to or not. The misconception that Tucker and Dale are evil killers just makes for a fantastic foundation for the students to try to be heroes and save the day by rescuing Allison, and eventually you do start to feel for those characters as well in the sense that they genuinely are afraid of what they may be doing to her, and for their own lives at the same time. Instead of going for the police, Chad continues to egg them on, saying that fighting back is what they have to do, and thanks to this peer pressure the group starts dying in the most hysterical manners possible. One of the scenes that makes the most impact is when Tucker is outside with a chainsaw cutting up trees while Dale and Allison are inside talking and playing a board game, working out the misconceptions entirely, only to have Tucker carve into a bee hive. One of the students decides to go ahead and try to get Allison back, but Tucker comes running out from behind the house, swinging the chainsaw at the bees. This leads the students to scatter, and the one who was brave enough to go to the house running away. Tucker, unaware of him at the time, seems to follow his path, gaining ground to get away from the bees. He sees him, continues screaming, and runs past him, only to have the student become impaled from not watching where he's running. To cap it all off, as the student dies, one of the bees lands on his nose, and you can see in his expression that he realized exactly what had happened. There's also the police officer and his death that comes thanks to some foreshadowing, going back to the kids in the car and only furthering the misconceptions.
On top of the all this, the showdowns towards the end between Chad, Tucker, and Dale are perhaps the most entertaining. Chad is an asthmatic, so every once in a while he'll take a hit from his inhaler, something he did earlier that went back to my own childhood when he used it then blew out the smoke like a cigarette around a campfire, an act I use to do all the time as a kid to try to look cool. Watching his drive to kill the two is simply startling and his character is built up the best out of them all, having a back story that tied into something in the film. However, the climax on their battle is a little too cartoonish. Again, it's foreshadowed, and you have to wonder how that specific item happens to be there that causes the end of the stand-off. Aside that, the very start of the film has two news reporters going into a cabin, only to have someone kill the two on camera. This serves absolutely no purpose, nor does it really have any merit to the story unless it's an acknowledgement to the cliffhanger ending through the news report heard in the hospital of the body that wasn't recovered.
Either way, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil has plenty of hilarity to it, and not in the manner that Faces of Death pushes humor in it. Every death in the film is truly an accident through a misunderstanding, and while you have a like/hate emotion to the students, you can't help but feel bad and root for Tucker and Dale who were only caught up in all of this by trying to save someone's life. The character development here is well executed too. Chad is established pretty early on that he's just a flat-out jerk, Allison is the college sweetheart who grows into a far more rounded, intelligent character, Tucker is a hard-working redneck who loves fishing and having a good time with his good buddy Dale, and Dale is actually a bit bumbling with a slight Larry the Cable Guy approach, but actually is a lot smarter thanks to his sharp memory and ability to recall various facts, as well as his child-like kind-hearted nature. Tucker and Dale play off each other very well, and continuously support one other, though brotherly quarrels do tend to happen, with Tucker acting like the older brother more by blaming him for a lot of the things going wrong.
The production of the film is also worth taking note of. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil has a high production quality at work, and it's great to see it all went to practical effects. I didn't notice much cg at work here, which is a plus for this sort of homage to backwoods Slasher films. The gore scenes are well executed too, with superb camera angles at times that show you how the situation can be misinterpreted, giving you the view from the college student's angle. Scenes such as Tucker and Dale trying to clean up after a students death, such as carrying it away from the scene, look pretty real instead of just cheap mannequin parts. On top of that, you have superb acting from everyone. Every character plays their part well from start to finish, and you can feel the terror in the students minds, as well as in Tucker and Dale's. Each side is represented well, and each character handles the situation perfectly. The students don't really have much to go off of in order to play off each other, some do have some good one liners, or they do manage to react well when one of their friends happens to die, by their hands or someone else's, and how they handle the police officer situation is just fantastic and will leave you in stitches.
I can't tell you the last time I had so much fun watching a movie. My only gripe is that this is a direct to DVD release here in North America. This is the kind of campy film you're going to want to go and see in a theater, as the crowd reaction is just going to make it even more of a memorable film. But, even just watching it in my living room, I loved every moment of it. Granted the ending could have used a little more work, but the acting was great, the story was very well written, and laughs were genuine. Hours after watching it I still was replaying the death scenes in my head and laughing, even when trying to sleep, and even the next day while writing this review, I'm still chuckling at the aforementioned bee scene and how genuinely offended Tucker was when Dale mentioned his feeling about fishing. It's rare to watch a movie that is so well done that you immediately want to sit back and watch it again, and that's how you'll feel with this once the credits start. If you're looking for some pure campy fun in memory of early Slasher classics, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is definitely it.
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