How seriously are we supposed to take Swiss Army Man? After all, the offbeat comedy opens with an extended flatulence gag and proudly wears its low-brow intentions on its proverbial sleeve.
If you didn’t think it was possible to combine Cast Away and Weekend at Bernie’s, with a dash of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, then you were wrong. Yet while such a hybrid has a refreshing originality during a summer of sequels and retreads, the surreal result is ultimately more admirable for its intention than its execution.
As the film opens, Hank (Paul Dano) is preparing to kill himself on a remote beach when he sees Manny (Daniel Radcliffe), a corpse lying on the beach that causes him to reconsider his own fate.
The encounter rejuvenates Hank, who starts an unlikely friendship with the slightly animated and quite useful cadaver while dragging it through the woods. The odyssey includes awkward discussions of the birds and bees, as well as the transformation of an abandoned campsite into a bizarre playground.
Broken by past romantic and family troubles, Hank’s goal becomes to find his way home and pursue a neighbor (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) who likely won’t reciprocate his affection.
On the surface, the film is filled with isolation and despair, yet underneath it’s a tender story of romantic optimism and finding purpose in life. You might need to dig behind the heavy reliance on sex jokes and gross-out humor, but it’s there.
Some of the idiosyncrasies feel random, and while there are some big laughs along the way, the script by rookie directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert isn’t especially funny or profound.
The premise requires quite a buy-in to its strange little outcast world — Dano and Radcliffe certainly did with their committed performances — and no doubt it will be off-putting to some. Still, as the film tries to juggle conflicting tones, the premise can’t sustain itself at feature length.
Is it a meditation on the human condition? Perhaps it’s a sympathetic portrait of mental illness. Or maybe it’s just a movie about a lonely guy chasing after the girl of his dreams. Whatever the interpretation, Swiss Army Man is difficult to dismiss, but equally awkward to embrace.
