Satire is a wonderful kind of humour. Comedians like Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Seth McFarlane and Sacha Baron Cohen have made names for themselves writing this type of comedy and they’ve done it wonderfully so. But satire doesn’t always go too well, as evidenced by American Rescue Squad.
When The Taxpayer, the hero of America, is kidnapped by a villain team called The Alliance, The Government call in Common Sense and Personal Responsibility with the help of an ordinary janitor, and hatch a plan to save The Taxpayer and defeat The Alliance once and for all, with musical numbers and big fights included.
Now, a big part of satire is subtlety. This film has none of it. At all. Characters are called the things they represent, there are horrible lines that make blatant statements about the US government etc. and this is entirely intentional. I suppose it would be worse if they were aiming for subtlety and didn’t achieve it whatsoever, but you can tell from a mile off that this is all done on purpose. The stereotypes it mocks are simply unfunny when they’re outright referenced to instead of hidden under veiled remarks. There’s no need to think, there is nothing smart about the humour – It’s just shit. And you can argue that they weren’t trying to be smart, but that doesn’t make it any easier to appreciate or enjoy the film. Sometimes that is the case, where you can accept the fact that the film is not very good but just enjoy it anyway, and laugh at its stupidity. This film doesn’t offer a chance to do that; shows like South Park are consistently stupid, yet underneath that are brutally honest jokes about America. So why is it that this film couldn’t use stupidity to its advantage? It has to be the film’s insistence on being completely obvious, with every line being cringe worthy and leaving you wishing you hadn’t started the film.
Although, this film is not without its positives. The script might be bunkum, but for a low budget movie, it’s actually pretty well made. The direction is fine; stuff like the sets and the costumer all fit the tone of the film really well - making it that slightly more admirable. On top of that, the cast aren’t too bad considering what they had to work with. They do a decent job of playing their stereotypes, it’d just be nice to see those stereotypes written well.
So whilst it has it’s positives, American Rescue Squad is a mostly appalling effort that offers no wit both dry and silly. At the end of the day this is no better than your average spoof movie.
American Rescue Squad is out May 22nd