Uwe Boll has often been considered one of the world’s worst living filmmakers. I think this gives the German director of video game adaptations too much credit. The fact of the matter is that Boll is simply extraneous. Regardless of how many boxing matches he challenges his critics to, his body of work plainly doesn’t matter. And with 2007’s Postal, his insignificance has never been more unmistakable.
Postal finds Boll once again performing a lobotomy on a video game, mining the depths of society for material with which he thinks he can work. The video game version first came out in 1997, with a better known sequel in 2003. With the to-do over Grand Theft Auto and similar shoot-em-up “edgy” video games infusing the gamer market, it is indeed debatable to surmise that Postal carries any clout.
But Uwe Boll is steeped in worthlessness and obliviousness, so the move makes sense. The plot is based on Postal 2, with Zack Ward starring as The Postal Dude. The Postal Dude lives in Paradise City, which is a town steeped in degeneracy and violence. After putting up with what we’re supposed to believe is an intolerable amount of crap, The Postal Dude conspires with Uncle Dave (Dave Foley), who happens to be a cult leader, to steal a shipment of “hilarious” dolls.
There is, of course, a problem. The Taliban and Osama bin Laden (Larry Thomas) also want the dolls because they’re planning to use them to poison Americans with the bird flu. There is a face-off at a German theme park in Paradise to retrieve the dolls, Vern Troyer stars as himself, and Uwe Boll attempts to show the world that he understands his own jokes (he doesn’t).
That’s the movie.
Boll’s doggedness to assert that his movie is very distasteful simply rings hollow. In the day and age of the Internet and limitless sources for immorality, are shock comedy movies really all that scandalous anymore? Boll floats the idea that Bush and bin Laden are best of friends, nudging his spectators in the ribs with clichéd setups like the film’s closing sequence as proof of how “edgy” the whole thing is. But it’s not. And the much discussed opening sequence involving 9/11 terrorists isn’t edgy either. Worst of all, it’s not amusing.
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