Cattle Call (2006)

Cattle Call, another film by National Lampoon, but is this in their high end or their low end?

'Do you like baseball? Then you're going to love Monday, we play baseball all day long on Monday!
Do you like meatballs? Then you're going to love Tuesdays, meatballs all day long on Tuesdays!
Do you like being rammed up the butt? Then you're gonna HATE Wednesdays!!'

This film is stupid. As bad as Big Stan? No. This film has many moments that have people cringing in their seats as well as many funny moments that lack something to make them funny. So, what is this film about? Two guys are trying to find love/get laid. So their plan? To start up a fake production company and pretend to be making a film that doesn't exist. To make it more believable they pull in a third guy to rent an office space. They each find a woman. This is where it gets predictable right? They start using them for sex, one falls in love with his girl and tells her the truth because he feels horrible, she gets angry then he does something and she forgives him. End.

Well, no. That isn't how this film goes (thankfully). The first bit follows the story, they find a girl each and one of them falls in love. From there it plays out very differently to how most would. It has a couple of unexpected twists and turns along the way and has a good number of laughs.

The script is sometimes well written, and the story has been thought through. However, some bits have either been over looked or deliberately exaggerated too far.  Take Glen, the third guy in all of this. From the get go he seems simple. I mean really simple. He seems to be turned on quickly and is often sharing his private affairs no one wants to know about. He is given a very basic script and there is almost no development of this character. He stays the same though out most of it. By that I mean he doesn't say a great deal, and when he does it is often obvious statements or things the other characters and the audience do not want to hear and he is also very easily influenced into doing things, even if he doesn't understand it or want to do it.

This is Glen, in one of his more 'normal' scenes. He has just applauded a song on the radio and is no continuing to creep out his date, the exact date he has been literally obsessed with since he first saw a picture of her. 

The acting in this film varies so much that it is hard to have an opinion on it, and this only hinders the judgements on other aspects of this film simply because it throws so much of the film off. Unlike many other films I have seen, the directing is the worst thing about this film. Normally it's the story, the acting or the over use of special effects, but not here. The way this film is shot makes it difficult to watch, difficult to follow and at times difficult to understand the actor's intentions as they are not pointed out clearly enough.

The comedy in this film is always very touch and go, sometimes it will be dead on with a great set up and a great delivery, but other times they will rely on props and actions too much. There are several scenes without any obvious or overblown comedy, and these are, without a doubt, the best scenes in the whole film. This includes the scene when one of the main guys really starts to fall in love with his chosen lady.

Actually this film is touch and go at all times. The acting is good for a fair bit of it, but there are many points when it falls short of expectations. The story is fairly good, and is one of its strongest points, if not the strongest point of the film, simply because the twists are unexpected and really good. These twists are ruined by one thing, and that is the way they are done. They are very clever but, as with many other moments in this film, they are overplayed to the extreme. There is no sense of normality with it and this really ruins everything. I have heard that other people like the music, but personally, I think it was OK, nothing amazing or special, nor anything awful.

There are worse films out there by a long way (click here for the review of one) but there are much better films that I would rather watch.


Rating: 5.3/10