{"id":2629,"date":"2024-08-21T15:30:27","date_gmt":"2024-08-21T15:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=2629"},"modified":"2024-10-14T14:45:09","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T18:45:09","slug":"tucker-dale-vs-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/21\/tucker-dale-vs-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"Tucker & Dale vs. Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Tucker & Dale vs. Evil <\/strong>(2010)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Magnet\/Horror-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 85 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody horror violence, language, brief nudity, alcohol and drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Eli Craig\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Eli Craig and Morgan Jurgenson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Mike Shields\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: David Geddes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 30, 2011 (US, limited release)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Tyler Labine, Alan Tudyk, Katrina Bowden, Jesse Moss, Philip Granger, Brandon McLaren, Christie Laing, Chelan Simmons, Travis Nelson, Alexander Arsenault, Adam Beauchesne, Joseph Sutherland, Karen Reigh, Weezer (the dog).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $223,838 (US)<\/p>\n

Rating:<\/strong>\u00a0***<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s a scenario we see all the time in horror films. A group of college kids in a van head to hillbilly country to go camping in the woods. On the way, they stop at a rundown gas station where they encounter locals that stare and gape at them. When they reach their campsite, they do all the normal things college students on vacation do. They drink beer, smoke pot and go skinny-dipping right after one tells an allegedly true story about a massacre that took place in these very woods many years earlier. This is usually when bodies start dropping courtesy of a deranged hillbilly with a chainsaw, axe or some other implement of death. And this is where the blood-soaked horror-comedy Tucker & Dale vs. Evil<\/strong> veers off in an unexpected direction.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I should first explain that Tucker (Tudyk, Firefly) and Dale (Labine, New Amsterdam) aren\u2019t your garden-variety backwoods hicks. They\u2019re nice albeit dim guys who wouldn\u2019t hurt a fly. They\u2019re just looking forward to a little R&R at the \u201cvacation home\u201d (an old cabin generously described as a \u201cfixer-upper\u201d) Tucker just bought. They first encounter the college kids at the gas station where Dale works up the courage to speak to one of the girls, Ally (Bowden, Piranha 3DD). Frightened by his appearances, she and her friends haul ass out of there. The guys are stopped en route by the local sheriff who ominously tells them they\u2019ll only find \u201cpain and suffering on a scale you can\u2019t even imagine\u201d there.<\/p>\n

\u00a0So far, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil<\/strong> sounds like every other horror movie involving kids, hillbillies and the woods, doesn\u2019t it? It\u2019s NOT! It starts exactly the way I described in the first paragraph before going off its own direction. Director and co-writer Eli Craig (Little Evil) upends the genre completely by reversing character roles. Let me explain. Tucker and Dale are doing a little night fishing when they spot the kids swimming naked. They accidentally startle Ally who hits her head as she falls in the lake. The guys rescue the unconscious girl and try to summon her friends to come get her. The students, assuming they\u2019ve kidnapped her with the intention of killing her, run off screaming. Having no other option, the guys take her back to their place to recover.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Meanwhile, the leader of the group Chad (Moss, Final Destination 3) rallies the others into a frenzy in his zeal to save Ally from the supposedly homicidal rednecks. And why shouldn\u2019t they think that? Tucker and Dale drive a pick-up filled with deadly tools including a chainsaw. They talk funny and look weird. They must be maniacs. Except they\u2019re not. Quite the opposite, they think there\u2019s something wrong with the college students who keep getting killed in their efforts to rescue Ally. She\u2019s actually in better hands with the two hillbillies.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The role switching is the cleverest aspect of Tucker & Dale vs. Evil<\/strong>. For a change, the hillbillies aren\u2019t deranged, toothless, ignorant maniacs. For a change, they\u2019re treated like human beings instead of freaks. Take Dale. He\u2019s a sweet guy who suffers from low self-esteem. He\u2019s not educated, but still manages to beat Ally in a game of Trivial Pursuit. He has the amazing ability to remember everything he\u2019s ever been told. Tucker is incredibly patient with his friend. He is a bit of a buffoon though. At one point, he\u2019s attacked by bees after cutting through their hive with his chainsaw. He tries to fight them off with the chainsaw. It\u2019s witnessed by one of the students who automatically assumes he\u2019s doing a crazed Leatherface dance.<\/p>\n

\u00a0These college kids, on the other hand, are a bunch of entitled idiots. If you remove Ally from the equation, there\u2019s barely enough brain matter among them to fill a coffee mug. When Ally tries to explain her \u201ccaptors\u201d are actually quite harmless, one of her friends accuses her of having Stockholm syndrome. Chad is the biggest a-hole of all of them. For reasons of his own, he operates under the belief that the only good hillbilly is a dead hillbilly.<\/p>\n

The most disappointing aspect of Tucker & Dale vs. Evil<\/strong> is the CGI gore. It\u2019s a real disconnect. It\u2019s too bad because there are a few good kill scenes that would have looked great with old-fashioned fake blood. Two of the kids get impaled. One jumps head first into a wood chipper. Another accidentally shoots himself. A girl\u2019s face is mutilated with a weed whacker. Somebody burns to death. Flashbacks to the earlier massacre include scenes of a boy with a saw blade lodged in his face and a girl getting stabbed through the neck with a machete. Blood and gore fly everywhere. People get covered in it. It\u2019s a bloody mess.<\/p>\n

\u00a0HOWEVER, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil<\/strong> is made in the spirit of fun, so it plays more like a gory slapstick routine. That\u2019s really the bottom line here. It\u2019s a goof on hillbilly horrors like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes and Wrong Turn. Craig toys with the conventions of the genre like a contrary child. Tucker and Dale aren\u2019t killers; they\u2019re luckless sorts who happen to buy the cabin previously owned by the lunatic behind the \u201cMemorial Day Massacre\u201d 20 years earlier. At the same time, he honors it by including familiar scenarios. He even sets the finale in a sawmill with now-psychotic Chad trying to cut Ally in half.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Labine and Tudyk are good in the title roles. They make a solid comedy team. Dale wants to hook up with Ally while Tucker just wants to make these pesky college kids go away. Bowden does a fine job with her role too. The relationship that develops between Dale and Ally is actually kind of sweet. She\u2019s very accepting of his shortcomings. She can see he’s a nice guy stuck with an unfortunate label. As for the rest of the kids, there’s not that much to say. It’s the usual gang of dumb, horny stereotypes except for them thinking they know how to handle this situation. Based on their ideas and actions, they obviously spent more time watching dopey horror movies than studying. Besides, there is NO situation. Everything that occurs is a result of misinterpretations and misunderstandings. When they see Ally helping Dale dig an outhouse hole, they think the guys are making her dig her own grave. If kids like this are the future, I am genuinely concerned for the planet.<\/p>\n

\u00a0That’s the fun of Tucker & Dale vs. Evil<\/strong>. It\u2019s a goofball role-reversal comedy mixed with generous amounts of (CGI) splatter. It\u2019ll often activate the laugh and gag reflexes at the same time. Craig, the son of acclaimed actress Sally Field, shows great promise in his feature debut. It\u2019s a bumpy ride at times, but it\u2019s consistently fun and funny.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Magnet\/Horror-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 85 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody horror violence, language, brief nudity, alcohol and drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Eli Craig\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Eli Craig and Morgan Jurgenson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Mike Shields\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: David Geddes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 30, 2011 (US, limited release)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Tyler Labine, Alan Tudyk, Katrina Bowden, Jesse Moss, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scary-gory-wild-i-love-it"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Tucker-Dale-vs.-Evil-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2629"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3509,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2629\/revisions\/3509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}