On Demand Weekly

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: TIM AND ERIC’S BILLION DOLLAR MOVIE (Magnolia).

TIM AND ERIC’S BILLION DOLLAR MOVIE
By Adam Schartoff

Warning: do not see this movie without smoking cannibis first. If you haven’t heard of Tim and Eric, permit me to illuminate. To call them a comedy duo would not be quite the accurate description. While they do create sketches designed to make people laugh, they generally don’t include the traditional comic arcs you might find in, say, a Saturday Night Live skit or something on Funny or Die. Gross out humor is a basic tenet as are the deranged characters who populate the sketches.

Ostensibly an expanded version of their sketch show on Adult Swim —cleverly called Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show, Great Job— TIM AND ERIC’S BILLION DOLLAR MOVIE follows the titular pair, Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, whom after getting an enormous budget to make their movie, wind up and blowing it all on make-overs and other insane purchases. The movie starts with them screening their movie —maybe 10 minutes long— for the top brass at the studio which includes Tommy Shlaaang (Robert Loggia), their chief investor. Displeased with the outcome of the movie, Shlaaang demands his money back or will have the two killed.

In order to raise the billion dollars, the guys respond to a TV add to take over a mall currently operated by businessman Damien Weebs (Will Ferrell) and his son Taquito (John C. Reilly). The mall has become beset with fire and brimstone. There’s are winos sleeping in corridors, and a blood thirsty wolf looking for prey among other things. Not to say its stores aren’t in operation. One is a sword shop run by the least customer friendly human being you’re likely to come across and played by a mustachioed Will Forte. Another shop is run by a man who, in order to keep his job at the mall, agrees to hand his pre-pubescent son over to Tim who subsequently refers to the boy as his own. Fortunately the more creepier possibilities to that sub-plot are never explored.