“Postal”, the latest film by love-him-or-hate-him director Uwe Boll, had been gearing up to go head-to-head this weekend against one of the year’s biggest films, the new “Indiana Jones” movie. For the better part of two months Boll had been smartly plugging the blogosphere preaching to those that would listen the merits of his dark satire on life post-9/11. I don’t think anyone, not even Boll, would have dared to guess that “Postal” could beat “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” on both pictures’ opening weekend but I’m also sure that Boll and his marketing team would have imagined that “Postal” could find its own small success as counter-programming to Spielberg and Lucas’ whip-cracking archaeologist. A few weeks ago “Postal” had been slated to open on over 1,000 screens but now, nearly at the last minute, the movie will have its release tomorrow on as little as 15 movie screens across North America. And that has made Boll an angry man.
In an angry post that Boll wrote on the official “Postal” website, the German filmmaker doesn’t hold back in his assessment of why his film got its legs cut out from underneath it. “you want only movies like JUMPER , SPEED RACER , WHAT HAPPENDS IN VEGAS …? then keep going and your dreams will be fullfilled,” says Boll. “POSTAL makes some very important points ..but you dont wanna see that …. : that Bush used the SEPTEMBER 11 to start a war against a country what had nothing to do with Bin Laden etc…. but this all doesnt matter because you are all busy to THINK that INDIANA JONES or NARNIA are important movies … but in real they are empty shells of an industry what wants to make money and what wants to keep you looking “escape movies” with nothing in it. in between they are putting some CONTROVERSIAL movies to show that they can do also IMPORTANT movies …but also this movies are not really critical….they only supporting the system and not showing the big picture. and POSTAL shows the BIG PICTURE …it nails the absurd situation with all the stupid religions, races and nations we are living in. POSTAL is not accepting bullshit politics. POSTAL has not the opinion that Bush made mistakes – POSTAL has the opinion that it is a scandal that BUSH is not in jail. What happened in America in the last 7 years is the biggest joke since Columbus stepped on that land.”
I’ve seen three of Uwe Boll’s movies (”House of the Dead”, “Alone in the Dark” and “Postal”) and I’ll put my money where my mouth is and say that “Postal” is the best of the bunch. I’ll be among the first to say that “House of the Dead” is a waste of zombies and that “Alone in the Dark” actually beats “House” as being a worse movie. I don’t think that Boll has done a lot of good within the video game movie market but when it comes to taking comedic chances and satirizing the state of the world, “Postal” is head and shoulders above stuff like “Date Movie” or any of those watered down “Airplane!”-lite comedies. The closest example of a movie that I can compare “Postal” to is the early 1970s comedy “Kentucky Fried Movie” which, if you’ve seen it, pushes the envelope with its humor. “Postal” doesn’t hold any holy ground; everyone and eveything is open to be mocked and ridiculed including Boll’s own run of making video game movies. While not every joke works there are definitely some funny moments in “Postal” and some oh-my-God-I-can’t-believe-that-they-said-that moments as well. I’m not going to put this film on a pedestal or say that it’s an instant classic but Boll has a damn good point: why isn’t his movie, which isn’t a complete stinker by any means, getting a bigger release than it is? Is what he saying the God’s honest truth: that his movie pushed the buttons of too many sensitive theater owners? It seems to me that he has some sort of case: the last film that went farther than usual in satirizing our modern world was Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy”. 20th Century Fox, the film’s owner, shelved it for years before grudgingly releasing it straight to video last year. Is it just a coincidence that both films send up stuff like religion, mass consumerism, corporations, television and popular coffee companies and both aren’t given a wide theatrical release? Do audiences only want to see safe send-ups of pop culture like the ones shown in “Scary Movie” and all of its spin-offs?
I think that there is another issue at play here instead of just “Postal” being another Uwe Boll movie. It would be interesting to see what the rest of you out there think of this story.
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