The Smell of Success (2011)

Honestly, the poop jokes are what people mainly took away... but there's so much more! Tons of social comment, companies, chemical manufacture, people... you name it, it's here.If all you took away from this was faecal pleasantries, you weren't paying attention. This is not a film for extremely literal people, or people who are ignorant of current events in the world of agriculture, food production, global patenting etc. We all know who 'Milagro' is supposed to represent.I adored the way it was filmed - some people hated it, but I thought it lent just the right tone... a deliberately artificial atmosphere, and it made it all the better. I don't know who dressed the sets, but if I ever do something like this, I want them working for me.The gags are just a plus, each one deliberate and funny as hell taken with the whole... these are not 'stand alone' gags.This is a magic cast for this sweet little film, and it 'comes up smelling like roses' for me.Watch out for the mushrooms, and don't eat fertilizer!

If you like realism, pass this one. If you like explosions, likewise. If your favorite film is Notting Hill, forget it. But if you like the unexpected, if you like being surprised by well-known actors in improbable roles, if you appreciate the second and third degrees of humor and things going a bit strange, this is definitely a film to see. Do not expect sanity or anything to do with down-to-earth. This is Delicatessen in Kansas, it's the Wizard of Oz without wizards and just one monkey. It's insane, it's incredible, and it is simply delicious. A review is supposed to be ten lines long, but that is an arbitrary limit imposed by functionaries that cannot comprehend that sometimes art cannot be described in a predetermined format.

Bof, I just saw the movie with my husband and I like the beginning but the story turned strange rapidly. Too much emphasis on the sh*t jokes. I really like Billy Bob Thornton thats why I rented the movie, I never heard of it before. I was at the video club and I rent it with 2 others movies. Tea Leoni was great but the character she played was too clumsy and it look a bit too surreal. The colour in the movie were strange, my husband didn't stop telling me that everything is brown! It was filmed in sepia, I was hoping that they will switched to normal colour but they only do at the end of the movie. The sepia got me very annoyed during the movie, it nice for a couple of minutes, half-hour maximum but the entire movie was too exaggerated. An average movie for a Wednesday night.

Anyone that has seen a movie by Mark and Michael Polish should come to expect something unusual. Their latest film, Manure, delivers in spades (yeah, that was a pun). Actually, this movie might best be seen under the influence of drugs. Being straight and sober, I'm not sure I appreciated it. Or understood it. Or perhaps I fell asleep and dreamt this.Starring Billy Bob Thornton and Tea Leoni, the story is about a woman living in New York (Rosemary Rose) who inherits her father's manure company after his untimely passing. Thornton is the lead salesman (Patrick). Together they try to save the company from bankruptcy. That's the sane part.Here's the silly stuff: Unfortunately, making Rose Manure profitable involves selling a lot of s___ (only one of maybe 200 excrement jokes and puns in the movie). And there's no better bulls____ than Patrick (trust me, they never stop).No, no, that was the sane part. This is what's zany: Turns out there's new competition in the form of a chemical fertilizer company entering the market, actually by parachuting in countless crates of chemical fertilizers as well as black-suited salesmen who land carrying briefcases.Hold it, that's still pretty tame compared to the psychedelic mushrooms they eat which causes them to vomit voluminously onto one another and hallucinate, or dressing up the Rose salesmen as Indians to burn at the stake, or the 48 Triple-D breasts one of the salesmen grows when he eats some fertilizer, or the vegetable masks. And there's plenty more where that came from.The plot is as silly as you can imagine, and like all the acting (except Thornton), way over the top. The sets typically include backdrops, with everything (EVERYTHING) in various shades of brown. You could not conceive of a more ridiculous movie. Which would be perfect if you were in the right mood (know what I mean?). But passing joints is not allowed at Sundance screenings, so most of the crowd was left shaking their heads and wondering what it was they just witnessed.Notes from Sundance The cast was all present on opening night. Thornton and Leoni were sitting right in front of me. They were both very gracious with fans, allowing their photos to be taken and being great sports. After the movie, Thornton was very funny and clever. But the Q&A quickly fizzled. The audience was too shell-shocked to think of intelligent questions. And no one had the audacity to ask Mark and Michael Polish what was on everyone's mind: "What the heck were you guys thinking?!!!"