Funland (1987)

This is a joke, right? It has to be a joke. No writer, director, producer, actor, cast and crew, could possibly make something this horrible except as a bizarre joke. Maybe they all got together and said, hey, what if we made the worst movie in the history of the universe, would people be suckered in and think it was entertaining? This cannot be a real movie. All the reviewers who liked it are in on the joke, that is the only possible explanation. I am not even going to mention what it is supposed to be about, because other reviewers have already done it, and because it is not a real movie. It is an incredibly bad joke.

FUNLAND is a locally made US comedy drama shot in Georgia. The tale is about a run-down amusement park that's purchased by a ruthless company who decide to keep on a single employee, a crazy guy who thinks he's a clown in real life. This is a bizarre movie, low budget and shot in a real-life fairground. It's an interesting backdrop but the story doesn't really know what it wants to be and feels sluggish and uninvolving as a result.

Understandably some people view this movie as a waste of time, but one man's trash is another's treasure. Funland was the creation of a couple of Saturday night live writers - and it shows. Some sections appear to be nothing more than skits filling out the storyline . . . and while some jokes work, some don't, but it's often in the eye of the beholder. Promo posters make it look like a psychotic clown on the rampage but Bruce Burger is the unwitting protagonist trying to save the one thing he believes in. When a mob family take over an amusement park and fire the mentally unstable resident clown he retreats to the closed down wax museum. Here the film takes a bizarre turn as he finds companionship with Marilyn Monroe, Bogart and his hand puppet Peter Pepperoni. They all come 'alive' sometimes preaching tolerance and other times revenge. He's also visited by the murdered ex-owner who wants him to stop the mob destroying the park they both love. Watch out for Bruce's hilarious descent into madness (complete with scantily clad angel of death) when the cafeteria men start rapping and a poster advertising the new roller-coaster, 'Man's Biggest Thrill Is Coming'.

I'm sure many people sit down to watch this film expecting horror. Although the chintzy tagline does suggest an even chintzier slasher flick, this movie rises above that genre. It's not a slasher flick at all, which is just fine. If anything, I would definitely classify this film in the Dark Comedy genre. It's almost an amusing and mocking look at insanity. The story is an interesting one, and a very creative one at that. Watch it if you enjoy a good chuckle, but not if you're looking for some cheap gore or contrived "pop-out" scare tactics. Prepare yourself for lots and lots of ethnic stereotyping, but done in such a way that it mocks those who actually believe in such stereotypes. The thing that makes this film a dark comedy is not only its ability to poke fun at bigots by catering to their ridiculous beliefs, but also at the utter random (and often crude) humor. If you enjoy films like Better Off Dead and I Love You to Death, it's almost guaranteed that you'll like this movie.