Trash Humpers

Saw Trash Humpers, a film that could probably be described as more of an experience than a story. The film is composed of a series of little skit-like scenes which follow the adventures of three people in old-person makeup and garish clothing. They merrily hump trashcans and tree branches and plants (which I think stretches the definition of "trash" a tad, but I'm just picky I guess.) They smash electronics and kill some people in very low-budget ways. The scenes are sometimes kind of hilarious (there's a scene with what I guess are the most game prostitutes ever) or surreal (there's a birthday party that's pretty fun) but are most often we get the definite result of some punk-y kids in masks just messing around.

The film smacks of trying a bit hard at times. For example, there's a scene where a little boy in a suit hits a doll with a hammer (oh my! Whatever will Mattel think?) Later on a man in a french maid outfit recites a poem about how cool trash is (but- but it's trash!? Trash? Cool? My brains!) I don't want to be too dismissive as that's a very easy posture to adopt, but it feels a lot like a high school kid re-discovering the joy of destruction and, carried away by this sense of breaking taboos, wrapping it up in an aggressive, confrontational film.

There's one main clever idea and here it is: The film is intentionally trash. By watching it (and worse, by analyzing it) we become the Trash Humpers, gratifying ourselves on this trash. But (and here's where the film gets a bit twaddle-y) this isn't a bad thing because trash and trashing things is pretty cool and so are you for watching this film. It's a bold move to try to sucker your audience like this but then Harmony Korine (the director) has sort of made a career out of producing extremely unpleasant films. I admit, I was kind of annoyed by the film, so mission accomplished I guess. In addition to the general abrasiveness of the film (there's an almost constant rooster-crow-like cackle coming from behind the camera, just to give you a taste of the annoyance in this thing,) I found it to be fairly inventive and amusing in parts, so maybe there's some counter-currents flowing through this film. I don't know.

I think Korine tries to flex his art chops a bit here, but the results are a bit lumpy and also a bit obvious (at one point a character declares that everyone who has jobs are stupid and that they, the trash humpers, are the only truly free ones around. Okay.) The "everything sucks except sucky things which are awesome" meme is kind of easy and dumb and anyway only is presented here and not spun or explored really at all. It's fun to get lost in the mayhem for a little while, just to sort of get a taste of the nihilism, but then you've really got to move on.