Does anybody out there enjoy them some “Mad TV”? Man, I don’t. If you’re like me and every once in a while you find yourself faced with this show with nothing else to do but stare and drool, you’re also trying to figure out just what it is that people like about it. It’s been around for awhile and it seems to be on Comedy Central all the goddamn time now, so there must be plenty of people out there that like it…I just don’t know why. The show confuses me. I see things which, I would normally think to be funny, but here they’re just not. Maybe the people involved aren’t very funny. Their hearts are in the right place and they’re engaging in a bunch of potentially funny activities, but the end result can only inspire a rare giggle. This is how I feel about “Bad Meat.”
Two bumbling fools, Buddy and Earl, hatch a none too bright scheme to make some sweet coin by kidnapping their local Congressman in Butcher’s Mill, Illinois. But before they can set this plan in motion, the Congressman trots himself to death on the treadmill. Not seeing this as a major problem, our two fools decide to kidnap the Congressman anyway, but they soon lose track of the corpse which ends up at the meat packing plant of which Earl is employed. By the title of this film, you can probably figure out, roughly, what happens next. Thus begins Buddy and Earl’s adventure as they try to dig themselves out of the shithole they’re wading in, but with every effort, they wind up just sinking themselves further.
There’s plenty to be found funny here, potentially, but to me, it seemed the timing was all off. The film moves fast and violent, not sitting still very long to let one soak in just what the hell is going on and I seriously couldn’t get myself to laugh. And that’s a problem when you’re trying to get yourself to laugh becuase the movie isn’t doing it for you. There was an attempt at being funny for sure, but the result confused me more than made me slap my knee. The film looks great and there are even interesting cameos by Judah Friedlander and Chevy Chase, but the funny just wasn’t there. I witnessed a bunch of characters running around like lunatics, getting themselves deeper into trouble than they already were and it made my head hurt. It was just chaos.
But then again, as with most comedies, this is a classic case of “what is funny to one will not be funny to another.” Just before I watched “Bad Meat” I decided to pay a quick visit to IMDB just to see what I was getting into. Just a little teaser…and there was a blinding review by someone who said something to the effect that they had just seen the film and ached all over from laughing so hard. So there ya go. And I’m sure many of you out there will find this one funny as well, but all I wound up with was a lousy headache.
