In this week\u2019s minor VOD releases, characters in isolated houses experience time loops and grand scientific discoveries, Philly gangsters plot revenge, and Jon Heder makes an ill-advised return to the style of his signature role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tapawingo<\/em><\/strong> (VOD December 2):<\/strong> If Jon Heder has made any attempt to avoid typecasting from his breakout role in Napoleon Dynamite<\/em>, he clearly gave up before agreeing to star in this dreadful comedy, as a character who might as well be named Schmapoleon Schmynamite. Heder\u2019s Nate Skoog is an awkward weirdo who lives in a small town populated by people with silly names and sillier haircuts, in a vaguely 1980s-ish time period. When his boss asks Nate to pick up his teenage son from school, Nate gets drawn into a battle with a group of bullying brothers. The characters are mostly middle-aged men who act like 12-year-old boys, with annoying, self-consciously quirky behavior standing in for recognizable human speech and emotion. Director and co-writer Dylan K. Narang packs the cast with familiar faces (including Gina Gershon, Chris Gethard, and John Ratzenberger) and loads up the soundtrack with distracting classic-rock needle-drops, but it\u2019s all just desperate posturing. The loose plot drags on for nearly two hours, but the tone never progresses beyond a condescending smirk. Grade: D<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Not for Nothing<\/em><\/strong> (VOD December 5):<\/strong> The meaningless filler phrase that serves as the title for this gangster drama is an accurate reflection of its amiable emptiness, with a story about drug pushing and murder that comes off mostly as goombah cosplay. It takes a while to distinguish among the various knockaround guys who hang out at a South Philadelphia bar, busting each other\u2019s chops and engaging in petty crime and light misogyny. Eventually the story coalesces around brothers Mikey (Mike Bash) and Frankie (Carmine Yusko), who decide to take on a fearsome local operator known as Bobby Boss (Mark Webber) after he forces Frankie\u2019s girlfriend to overdose on fentanyl. The quest for vengeance shares space with underwhelming subplots about the brothers\u2019 buddies, and the movie lurches clumsily from broad comedy to grim drama. The web of gangland ties becomes so convoluted by the end that it\u2019s hard to determine whether the protagonists have triumphed (or what that would even entail). Despite the mounting tragedy, there\u2019s no pathos, just a lot of overstated bluster. Grade: C<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Universal<\/em><\/strong> (VOD December 5):<\/strong> The fate of humanity may rest in the hands of three unassuming people in a vacation-rental cabin in writer-director Stephen Portland\u2019s low-key sci-fi comedy. Universal<\/em> is so low-key that its world-changing stakes never feel particularly convincing, especially when Portland spends just as much time on lukewarm interpersonal conflict. Academics Leo (Joe Thomas) and Naomi (Rosa Robson) are on a romantic anniversary getaway when they\u2019re surprised by the arrival of Ricky (Kelley Mack), an eccentric amateur codebreaker who\u2019s been working with Leo on human genome data. The irritating, overly enthusiastic Ricky claims to have discovered a secret message hidden in DNA strands, and she insists on staying so that she and Leo can decipher it. The bond among the trio develops haltingly, with half-hearted cringe comedy (including a bizarre extended poop joke) alongside reams of scientific jargon. The result is a movie that can\u2019t quite commit either to its stilted humor or its high-concept ideas, and ends up in a dissatisfying middle ground. Grade: C<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n