No. 76 Pottersville (2017) 76 of 100

 

Some festive cheer now, and despite watching this in September I was ready to be charmed by this small town tale of mischief and human kindness. Alas it’s not so much ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ as it’s a big old piece of crap.

The titular town of Pottersville is facing hard times. An opening drone shot shows the town to have a lot of failed businesses and repossessed properties. One business that is struggling on is the general store, run by Michael Shannon’s Maynard Greiger, which has to offer credit to its punters which Maynard logs in a large register.

His shop assistant is the lovely Judy Greer and Stevie Wonder could see that the pair will end up as a couple by the movie’s end. For now though Maynard is married and after getting some elk steaks from Lovejoy’s mountain man character he heads home to surprise his wife. As anyone who has ever seen a film ever will know he of course stumbles onto the wife’s infidelity. She’s not shagging anyone but is partaking in a ‘furries’ session with local sheriff Ron ‘Hellboy’ Perlman. This activity involves the participants dressing up in full animal costumes and comes across as super creepy.

Maynard heads back to the shop and puts on a spare gorilla costume. As you do. The next morning he wakes up and the town is full of excitement – Bigfoot has been spotted. In a couple of flashbacks we see that ‘Bigfoot’ was in fact Maynard running about pished.

National media picks of the story and soon the small town is thriving with visitors keen to capture a glimpse of the hairy beast. Maynard obliges and runs around the town and woods in his suit, despite it looking like a non-movie quality Chewbacca outfit.

With excitement reaching lukewarm levels, TV monster hunter Brock Masterton rolls into town and pledges to capture the beast. With the help of Lovejoy and Hellboy he heads into the woods with Maynard suiting up to put a show on for the cameras. Will he get caught or will the mystery survive and bring new prosperity to the town? Will Maynard’s unfeasible wife hang around or will we get the romance with Judy Greer that we all dream about?

I had a vague memory of enjoying this film when I first saw it but I must have been hepped up on egg nog at the time. It was really bad and unwatchable in places. It starts out OK with kindly Maynard offering goodwill to all and then running about in a gorilla suit for a while. I know he was trying to help the town, and there may have been some symmetry between his actions and his wife’s furry kink, but it really made no sense and all concerned seemed somewhat embarrassed with their offering.

The worst of the lot was the Brock Masterton character. This faux Australian was so annoying you’d punch his lights out as soon as he opened his unfunny gob. I appreciate the character was meant to be annoying but why give an awful character a couple of songs and several long scenes where he mugged along with a pile of bullshit chatter?

I think the film was well intended and you can see some embers of a well meaning plot and some seasonal warmth in its charred corpse, but the execution was nowhere. You basically get 40 minutes of men in the woods fannying about, trying desperately to pump the run time on a script that could be summarised on a postage stamp.

Shannon is decent as the warm and kindly shopkeeper. He seems nice and you’d like him to be your pal. His actions however make no sense nor does his choice of wife. The ending was meant to evoke a bit of George Bailey, but you’d need a bottle of Baileys to get through this pile of barely coherent and irritating nonsense.

When is Shannon-On? - 02.37

Outcome? Opening a museum and kissing Judy Greer

Film 1/5

Shannon Stars 2.5/5