Blubberella (2011) Phase 4 Films/Comedy-Action-Horror RT: 86 minutes Rated R (crude and sexual content throughout, pervasive language, some violence) Director: Uwe Boll Screenplay: Uwe Boll Music: Jessica de Rooij Cinematography: Mathias Neumann Release date: April 28, 2011 (US) Cast: Lindsay Hollister, Brendan Fletcher, Michael Pare, William Belli, Annett Culp, Clint Howard, Steffen Mennekes, Arved Birnbaum, Safiya Kaygin, Nik Goldman, Boris Balta, Uwe Boll. Box Office: N/A
Rating: ½ *
When it comes to Uwe Boll movies, I always try to approach them with an open mind. The man makes bad movies, really BAD movies. He either does so on purpose or has no idea how incompetent a filmmaker he is. I haven’t figured out which. I’ve enjoyed some of his movies- e.g. Alone in the Dark, BloodRayne, In the Name of the King, Postal and Rampage- in an ironic “so bad, it’s great” way. Others are just plain bad. Sadly, Blubberella falls into the latter category. It’s a dull, unfunny, incoherent mess and a waste of a great cheesy-cool premise.
The titular heroine (Hollister, Get Smart) is a plus-size “dhampir” (half human/half vampire) Nazi fighter in WWII-era Germany. She’s about 800 years old. She handles a pair of swords and a pair of salamis with equal ease. Her main functions in life are eating, hearing bad fat jokes and killing Nazis. One thing she can’t do is find a mate. She can’t understand why the guys she meets on a Jewish dating site keep standing her up despite her willingness to convert. Hey, I never she was too bright.
Things get murky in Blubberella once the plot kicks in. With Hitler’s Third Reich Army blitzkrieging its way across Europe, Blubberella hooks up with a group of Resistance fighters, led by eventual love interest Nathaniel (Fletcher, Rampage) and flamboyantly gay Vadge (Belli, American Wedding). Their “attempt” to free a bunch of Jewish captives from a freight train somehow results in a Nazi Commandant (Pare, Streets of Fire) becoming a vampire. Even worse, Hitler himself (played by writer-director Boll) gets turned into a vampire.
Most of Blubberella revolves around the heroine and her team taking out vampire Nazis (or is it Nazi vampires?). A mad Nazi doctor played by Ron Howard’s little brother Clint (House of the Dead) also factors into the story somehow. Full disclosure, I gave up trying to understand this utterly pointless movie and focused instead on listing all the ways it fails as entertainment. It could have been great fun had Boll bothered to write a coherent script, but here we are neck-deep in total cinematic BS.
If pressed, I’d have to say Blubberella is at its worst when it tries to be funny. It never is. This is a BIG problem because it’s technically a comedy. An unfunny comedy is the worst kind of bad movie. If done right-wrong, you can laugh at a failed drama or inept actioner. Bad comedies suck no matter how you look at it. They’re painful to sit through. That perfectly sums up how I felt watching Blubberella. It’s not even unintentionally funny. It’s excruciatingly, jaw-droppingly, stupefyingly, all-caps BAD!
I don’t mind that most of the gags in Blubberella are in incredibly poor taste. I expected it would be. It’s a “comedy” set during the Holocaust. It involves Nazis. The heroine is an obese woman who uses food as a substitute for sex. Early on, she kills a German soldier so she can steal his sandwich. There are many jokes at her expense. It contains offensive stereotypes of all kinds- e.g. Jews, Germans, gays and blacks. There are two scenes, one a terrible parody of the 2009 drama Precious, featuring white actors in blackface. One, played by Boll, does a lousy impression of Samuel L. Jackson with all the mf-bombs he drops. None of this bothers me. I was raised on Mel Brooks comedies like The Producers and Blazing Saddles. The problem is Boll tries too hard to amuse and offend to the point of overkill. The same goes for all the anachronisms. The characters use computers, cell phones and Segways. There are references to Pilates, Elvis and George W. Bush. We’re informed via titles that the doctor’s previous patients include Michael Jackson, Corey Haim and Lindsay Lohan. There are more anachronisms, many more. It gets old fast.
Fun fact, Blubberella was shot simultaneously with BloodRayne: The Third Reich. It utilizes the same cast, crew, sets and costumes. And you thought William “One-Shot” Beaudine (Billy the Kid vs. Dracula) was cheap? Me, I don’t mind cheap. Low-budget B-movies can be fun and often are albeit for the wrong reasons. There is NO fun to be had with Blubberella. It’s bad on every level, especially when it comes to the confused narrative. It makes no sense. For example, the fact that the title character is part-vampire is all but forgotten after her intro. We never see her grow fangs, bite victims or suck blood. For that matter, we never see any of the converts display a single vampire trait either. What’s the deal, Uwe? This is a colossal screw-up.
The only mildly engaging thing about Blubberella is lead actress Hollister. It’s great to see a plus-size heroine kick ass. The one good scene shows her smothering a Nazi baddie with her large breasts. If only the rest of the movie followed suit. She appears to be talented even though precious little of it is on display here. You know what? Why don’t I just cut through all the verbal yang-yang and state categorically that ALL of the “acting” in Blubberella is terrible. The “performances” are actually embarrassing. I’m especially disappointed in Pare; he’s capable of far better. As for Clint Howard, he ought to stick with appearing in big brother Ronny’s movies.
After reading about Blubberella in Entertainment Weekly (the March 25, 2011 issue), I was psyched to see it. It sounded like fun. I wanted to enjoy it, but it’s impossible. It’s not even remotely watchable. You know a movie has failed when the outtakes at the end aren’t entertaining. The ultimately tragedy of Blubberella is that it could have worked if Uwe Boll didn’t take such a half-assed approach to it. It’s easily the worst movie of his career and that’s saying a lot given the titles on his resume. I’m not even sure RiffTrax can save this one. It just sucks.
