Customer Reviews

Cornman: American Vegetable Hero

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This movie was super funny and great entertainment!...I don't watch too many low-budget indie films, but this was filmed locally in the Dallas area, where I'm at (anyone who lives in Dallas or Denton should check this out and look for landmarks that you recognize!), and I was very pleasantly surprised. Cornman has hilarious characters, very witty dialogue, and pokes fun at plenty of B-movie cliches.

In comparison to another film starring offbeat superheroes - I recently saw Orgazmo (which, for anyone who doesn't know, is a funny superhero movie from the Southpark people, not an adult film), and hands down I liked Cornman a whole lot better.

The DVD is cool too, and has some neat extras.

there is only 1 copy left, so you better stop reading this and start buying it. for real.

i thought this movie was just going to be awful, as if it would try to be serious... but seriously it was one of the funniest things i have ever seen. i will watch it again, and i will make my friends watch it.

Never before have I prayed for corn smut, corn blight, corn spiders, drought, or locusts to intervene in a movie and bring it to a conclusion, but that's exactly what I was thinking a mere five minutes into "Cornman." The premise is that a guy gets into some toxic waste in a cornfield which helps him to communicate with corn. With his sidekick Butterboy in tow, he must defend the world from the nefarious plotting of Dr. Hoe who wields his own mutant, Cornsparagus, in the strangest starch-based world domination plot I have ever seen.

I give the film two stars for originality and attempting to make a very unique parody, and am curious what future projects are in store for writer, producer, and director Barak Epstein. Lloyd Kaufman of Troma fame makes a special guest appearance, and is even more high-strung than normal (if you can believe that), leading me to conclude that Epstein might have found his niche.

The film has many continuity flaws, some intentional, others surely not. Cornman himself, for instance, is conspicuously played by two different actors, which is explained in the script in a stab at humor. I thought it was a funny concept, though execution was poor. This is an extremely low budget movie that intentionally exploits the lack of funding to its advantage. With a bit more deliberation and some improvements to the script this could have been a much funnier concept. As it is now, it has moments of cleverness, but is quite repetitious and tends to get boring.

It features many unusual uses for food ("Matzoh ball soup isn't supposed to be turquoise!") and creative characters like Starch, Waxy, Colonel Kernal, and El Gordo who was played by Socky Villarreal. The costumes are intentionally laughable, and are intermittently amusing. I liked the use of paper masks in the opening, and the enlarged nasal appendage use is one of the most peculiar choices in recent film history.

The film is intentionally cheesy, yet because it sets out as a low budget parody, it is less successful as a camp piece than I was expecting. "Cornman" gets tedious and annoying fairly quickly, leaving me unenthusiastic for the final product as a whole. There are some extras including deleted scenes (I was surprised that anything was left on the cutting room floor) and two commentary tracks (if you have the patience to watch it three times total): the production attempts to provide a good value. I am being generous to Epstein and crew as it is difficult to be a young underfunded filmmaker attempting to break new ground. In that light, I give this admittedly qualified endorsement: "Cornman" is the best psychic corn superhero film that I have ever seen.

This is probably the worst movie I have ever seen; that makes it amazingly great! Yes, this is a paradox, you must see to believe. I wonder how they got anyone to publish this? I hope there is a sequel.