Jared Hess’ comic tribute to sci-fi geekdom and adolescent creative juice is one-of-a-kind, as idiosyncratic and heartfelt as its wannabe artist heroes. As sci-fi scribe Dr Ronald Chevalier, a hilariously New Age Jemaine Clement lords it over his teen fans and purloins all their best ideas.
“Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) makes gross-out Freudian body-horror movies full of tender sympathy. The world of the flesh is icky but, oh, the spirit soars – on even the tackiest wings. Gentlemen Broncos is the atrocious title of an enchantingly freakish comedy that centers on Benjamin (Michael Angarano), a teen who writes Dune-like sci-fi tomes (The Yeast Lords) in which he sublimates like mad to relieve his sexual discomfort. No, Hess doesn’t spell it out, but by the third or fourth time Benjamin’s fictional hero (Sam Rockwell) – in garish, Pop Art fantasy sequences – loses his gonads and faces off against giant, laser-blasting mammaries, he doesn’t really need to...
The best part is Jemaine Clement as Benjamin’s grandiose genre hero, Dr Ronald Chevalier. Even if you love him on Flight of the Conchords, you’ll be unprepared for his genius – and charisma. Gazing on his young fans, he intones, ‘So many juvenescent, ripe minds,’ looking and sounding under his dark, heavy beard like James Mason’s Captain Nemo on the verge of a titanic belch.” — David Edelstein, New York Magazine. [Did we imagine it or is Jemaine channelling his James Mason via Sam Neill?]
“This is personal filmmaking, surveying the private emotions that generally embarrass people or make us feel out of step – a daring proposition in an era that frantically insists upon marketable conformity... This makes Gentlemen Broncos as daring as the latest work of Hess’ other American Eccentrics peers Spike Jonze and Wes Anderson... In Gentlemen Broncos, sci-fi’s poignant charms even coexist with churchgoing – note the quilt hanging in Benji’s bedroom of Jesus riding Barney the dinosaur. It’s all part of our authentic and poignant cultural mess.” — Armond White, NY Press
