Otis (2008)
Review by Noel
Many, many years from now, let’s say the year 2010, horror fans will look to the middle part of this decade, and remember with rolls of their eyes, the overused term “torture porn”. A little can go a long way, and it was only a matter of time before someone parodied it, knowing that torture porn itself can get funny at how ridiculous it gets (a guy’s dick was cut off in Hostel 2 (review) and a girl’s clit was soldered in Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door (review) – there ARE a finite number of body parts one can torment…).
With Otis, we have our first overt torture porn spoof…and it’s a welcome one. Straight up, it’s not as funny as those blurbs on the DVD jacket claim, but you’ll have a good time nonetheless. It’s best to enjoy…in bits and pieces.
There’s Otis. There’s Kim. It could be Otis and Kim 4-ever. It could be Otis and Kim, King and Queen of the prom. There are just a couple of problems…
Otis (Bostin Christopher) is a fat 40-year old virgin and pizza delivery boy slob still living in the 80’s. And Kim…isn’t really Kim. It’s just a name Otis likes to call the girls he’s kidnapped and tortured. Four of them to be exact. Actually, it’s five, but the police haven’t reported Ashlyn Warren due to the extreme nature of her untimely death (“…the one with the missing tits. We found her in 4 different dump stops”). We open the film Otis with another prom date…that just isn’t working out. Terminally, as in dead.
Otis needs another “Kim.” He finds her in the form of Riley Lawson (Ashley Johnson- yeah, the little girl from Growing Pains is all growd up and all filled out) as he delivers a pizza to the Lawson house and she just happens to be the one to pay for the pizza and give him a tip (“I wish I could have given you more”). Otis takes that to heart and kidnaps Kim, um Riley, and begins to make special plans for the prom.
But the Lawson Family (Daniel Stern, Illeana Douglas, Jared Kusnitz) isn’t taking Riley’s kidnapping lying down. Oh no. They’ve called in a specialist, Agent Hotchkiss played by Jere Burns (“It’s a 3-dimensional puzzle”), and if that isn’t successful, they may have to throw down some justice…Lawson Style.
What works about Otis:
1.) “Kim” is hot. Very, very, very hot.
2.) The Firebird- Oh, and nice wind machine…
3.) The Candle People…they can’t help you.
4.) Ashley Johnson makes a wonderful kidnappee, knowing how much of a nutjob Otis is and what to say to appease him. Her line reading of the words “Our song…” is one of the funniest moments of the movie.
5.) The extension cord joke never fails.
6.) Tracy Scoggins has a small role as a very sensitive news reporter (“…or what’s left of her”).
7.) Underwire can be useful…Whowouldathunkit?
8.) The best movie mom of 2008, Illeana Douglas (“Get some power tools”).
9.) The Lawson Family Kill-For-All (“I electrocuted his asshole!!!”).
10.) Jere Burns gets funniest lines in the movie (“I use a condom”).
11.) An ending that had me smiling at its abruptness.
What doesn’t work:
1.) Bostin Christopher as Otis- He looks a little like the great character actor Pruitt Taylor-Vince. If only he had a shard of his acting ability. He says all his lines in a monotone drawl, that I guess is supposed to come off as creepily detached and/or psychotic, but it just shows that he can’t act…or that the filmmakers just used the take where he actually REMEMBERED all his lines. Think about how much more scary this movie might have been if Christopher had been convincing in his madness. He does get funny lines…he just can’t deliver them.
2.) The second half is much funnier than the first half.
3.) Blood, but not as much gore as you’d expect or hope for.
4.) 80’s hair band soundtrack.
5.) At 100 minutes, it’s about 15 minutes too long. But like I said, it kicks up in the second half…
6.) Kevin Pollak gets a paycheck and but doesn’t quite earn it in a one-note performance doing his best Joe Pesci impersonation. Too bad it’s not that funny or that intimidating.
7.) The movie should have been called “The Lawson Family” because they’re infinitely more interesting than Otis.
That being said, go ahead and rent Otis. You’ll like it but you won’t love it, and you’ll stop the DVD thinking that it should have been so much better. But before you dwell on that too much…at least it’s not Captivity…
Available on Amazon
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