Pottersville (2017) Review

Time: 84 Minutes
Age Rating:
Cast:
Michael Shannon as Maynard Greiger
Judy Greer as Parker
Ron Perlman as Sheriff Jack
Thomas Lennon as Brock Masterson
Christina Hendricks as Connie Greiger
Ian McShane as Bart
Director: Seth Henrikson

Maynard (Michael Shannon) is a beloved local businessman who is mistaken for the legendary Bigfoot during an inebriated romp through town in a makeshift gorilla costume. The sightings set off an international Bigfoot media spectacle and a windfall of tourism dollars for a simple American town hit by hard times.

I saw Pottersville out of morbid curiosity when it came onto a Netflix. It seemed to be a movie that would never ever exist, like a Saturday Night Live skit or one of those fake trailers at the beginning of Tropic Thunder with a cast including Michael Shannon and Ron Perlman in a movie about Bigfoot which happens to be a light hearted comedic film set around Christmas time. Everything from the posters to the trailer seemed completely fake, but it turns out it is real, someone really made this movie. Having seen it, I have to say that it really caught me off guard by how much I had fun with it. Not that it’s a good movie, it’s far from that. But it was such a weird movie to watch and had such bizarre moments that I couldn’t help but enjoy the randomness.

All the plot synopsises may say that Pottersville is about Michael Shannon getting drunk, dressing up like a sasquatch and the town the next morning believes that Bigfoot is a thing. But what they don’t tell you is that in this movie, Michael Shannon gets drunk and dresses up because he found out that his wife played by Christina Hendricks is having an affair with Ron Perlman and they are both furries. And they are in a club of furries in the town. So that’s pretty much the plot. I found myself finding unintentional funny moments more hilarious than the intentionally funny moments. However, to be honest, I’m wondering whether the ‘unintentionally funny’ moments was actually meant to be funny. When you see Ron Perlman say how he’s a furry and how he’s proud of it, it makes you wonder how self aware the people working on the movie were. It’s not like a studio movie, and at times it feels like there was some actual passion put into it, so I honestly can’t tell. Whatever the case, it is rather entertaining. I won’t go into too much of the random moments for your benefit if you choose to watch it. Plotwise this movie isn’t very interesting, outside of some random aspects it’s a fairly generic ‘Christmas movie’ (even though this movie doesn’t really have much to do with Christmas). There are parts, especially in the middle of the movie, where it isn’t very entertaining and it feels like a basic generic family movie, so it’s not consistently entertaining. But looking back on the overall film, I just have this really positive feeling towards it.

This movie has an weirdly big cast, with big names like Michael Shannon, Judy Greer, Ian McShane, Ron Perlman and Christina Hendricks all part of it. As you can probably tell, they don’t do their finest work here, though they aren’t really that bad and are trying to a degree and at the same time they know what movie they are in. Out of all of the main cast I’d say that Christina Hendricks really doesn’t get to do much here, she’s more wasted than the others (not that she’s missing out on much). The standout here is Michael Shannon, because despite him being known for playing crazed, insane, and villainous characters, here he plays a good guy, and it’s weird, adorable or hilarious (or all three). Shannon doesn’t appear to be phoning it in and is trying to an extent. His involvement with the movie just made it more enjoyable.

At times the direction by Seth Henrikson is okay, at other times it is incredibly basic and straight to DVD. There’s nothing to really say about it, the direction is incredibly average but the majority of it isn’t particularly terrible by any means.

I wouldn’t call Pottersville a good movie but I’m questioning myself when I’m calling it a bad movie. I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy the movie, because I did. It’s such a bizarre movie, made more bizarre by the bizarre plot, the bizarre choices and the bizarre amount of talent involved. It’s not completely unintentionally hilarious, it’s not quite the 2010’s equivalent of The Room, because some elements are okay (or generic) enough instead of being a complete disaster. But I still had a fun time when I watched it ironically. If you are morbidly curious in it, give it a watch when you can, but it might be a good idea to know what you’re in for beforehand.

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