Funny, but not downright hilarious

Rating: 7/10 (1 November 2009)

Roy Munson(Woody Harrelson) is a bowling prodigy and wins the 1979 Iowa state amateur championship and plans to leave his hometown to make it big by going on a Professional Bowlers Tour. But his dreams comes to a halt when he comes across Ernie McCracken(Bill Murray) who tricks Roy and uses him as a pawn while Ernie runs off with all the money he got from conning. The angry people that got conned takes there anger out on Roy, and he gets his hand amputated. Yrs later Roy who was a innocent boy has a hook for a hand now where he used to bowl with and is now a con man himself, since he is in debt with the landlady and soon is forced to have unwanted sex with her. But a ray of hope comes for Roy when he meets Ishmael who is a talented bowler himself and tries to recruit him for the $1,000,000 winner-take-all tournament in Reno, Nevada. The thing is Ishmael is a Amish boy. This film was a bit darker than I expected and flows with some crude and rude humor, but it's actually quite funny at times, despite it being a bit dark. And the humor in this might offend some people even if it's not the most repulsive comedy out there or even comes close but since it sort of seem like a kid friendly comedy some may get offended. This is a funny road movie, that will keep you laughing or at least grinning in some scenes. It wasn't the most hilarious movie I ever seen but I got some good laughs out of it. The direction the creators went with this is ambiguous and isn't the stereotypical and predictable comedy, and the ending did not sit right with me and sort of made me angry. But it just shows the reality of life even if a lot of this film is down right outrageous. Soon Claudia(Vanessa Angel) is in the group as well, but I found her character more annoying than funny, she is a whore and that is the bottom line no matter what she does at the end. It just wasn't believable and it seemed like she had some other ulterior motives or just forced. I don't know about anyone else but I don't particularly think that a girl that constantly act like a hooker throughout the whole movie to be attractive. Plus in my opinion she has a butter face but maybe I am shallow. And to top it off she wasn't sexy even if some do disagree, she was only on the ride for the money and that is basically the main thing she saw at the end as well, cause her character change was just not believable. Especially since the characters are more serious compared to other comedies where the characters seem to be from another planet or just way too bizarre, stupid and retarded which sometimes adds to the comedic value, but that ain't the case for this film. I found how they turn any serious situation that are suppose to be dull into something funny which is a nice touch. Just about the entire cast was special and put on a great and funny performance. So it's a funny comedy with some crude and rude humor, just nothing downright hilarious and the comedy in this seemed a bit tacky sometimes.
7.2/10