Movies / Movie Reviews

The Tripper at the Fantasia Film Festival

By Al Kratina
July 22, 2007 - 13:25

The Tripper

2007, USA

Director: David Arquette

Writer: David Arquette, Joe Harris

Cast: David Arquette, Richmond Arquette, Courtney Cox, Balthazar Getty, Lukas Haas

Producers: David Arquette, Evan Astrowsky, Courtney Cox, Neil A. Machlis, Navin Narang

Distributor: 20th Century Fox

Rating; Rated R for strong horror violence and gore, drug content, language and some sexuality/nudity.

Genre: Horror

Web: www.myspace.com/thetrippermovie

Running Time: 93 minutes

 

Let’s get a small proviso out of the way before this review can proceed, in the interests of full disclosure. Firstly, I, reviewer Al Kratina, am militantly straight-edge and extremely left-wing. The Tripper, the film, is about a bunch of retardedly drugged-out hippies getting slaughtered by a serial killing neo-con in a Reagan mask. So, pretty much, I hate both sides of the equation right off the bat, making having an objective opinion difficult. We're polar opposites, and it's like asking someone with a college degree to write about an Adam Sandler movie.

That said, even if I didn’t hate this movie before it started, I probably wouldn’t have liked it anyway. David Arquette’s directorial debut seems to amount to him and his friends screwing around with a couple of million dollars in the forest. Everyone in this film is a caricature, making it difficult to sympathize with anyone, good or bad. And casting Jason Mewes, an ex-drug addict, as a massive dope fiend seems somehow cruel, if admittedly fitting. The kill scenes are occasionally effective, but for the most part relatively timid for this type of movie. Thomas Jane as the local police chief trying to stop a local hick from murdering the attendees of a hippie music festival is probably the highlight of the film, aside from seeing Paul Reubens as a concert promoter swear in ways that would make Pee Wee Herman’s throat constrict until he wheezed to death squealing for help from Globey. Incidentally, the film was executive produced by horror comic king Steve Niles, though that doesn’t seem to have helped any. But other than those two decent performances, there isn’t much to like here. If you’re me, however, there’s plenty to infuriate.

 

Rating: 1 on 10

 

alkratina@gmail.com

 

ADDITIONAL BONUS REVIEW BY ALISON ANDERSON

 

Sick of reading paragraphs with punctuation and sentences? Here’s some bit-sized capsule reviews, with a handy “Suckometer” scale, that runs from 0 (good) to Suck (not good).

 

The Tripper

So David Arquette went to Burning Man.  That is basically what I got from this movie. Oh yeah and I think that a lot of girls that go to Burning Man don't shave anything.  The Tripper has a lot of naked people and a lot of drugs.  Enough with the drug movies. Seriously, I’m so sick of these movies where directors want to mess around with their visual tricks and whatnot, so they put a lot of drugs into the movie to justify whatever the hell stupid ill-fitting stylistic effect they choose.  It's not impressive at all.  This movie plays like a 3.7 million dollar toy for director David Arquette.  I think if I had a 3.7 million dollar toy I would choose a light saber, a real one.  Then I would take my light saber and poke David Arquette in the eye with it.  This could have been an alright movie but gets lost in Arquette's attempt at making a ... statement?  Well I think that's what was going on but overall this film gets obscured by crap.

On a scale of 0 to suck I give it a 7.

 

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12