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String together a bunch of half baked gags by a barely there plot, and what do you get? Strange Wilderness.

It seems like a good idea at first; Steve Zahn, who has brightened films like Sahara and Saving Silverman, as the head of a clueless team of wildlife documenters. Add in Jonah Hill (Superbad, Walk Hard: The Dewy Cox Story, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall), Kevin Heffernan (The utterly unforgettable and brilliant Farva from Super Troopers), Justin Long (Dodgeball, Idiocracy), and then toss in excellently random casting of a bizarre potpourri of bigger names like Ernest Borgnine, Robert Patrick, and Harry Hamlin. Throw in some good weed gags and one cock-gobbling turkey, and it sounds like an excellent comedy, right?

It really isn’t. For all it’s promise, Strange Wilderness has no sense of cohesiveness, no truly engaging characters (despite the loaded cast), and no plot. Sure, it has a basic plot, but really the film watches like a bunch of drunk comedians screwing around in front of a handycam for funsies.

It has up points, but for the most part all the up points were in the trailer. The turkey scene did have me laughing pretty hard, but it went on too long and was taken too far. The voice-overs during the footage of wildlife were fantastic, and though some of the weed jokes were good, most were so in your face that they ceased to be funny.  It is as if the writers had three good gags that were strung together to make a film.

The DVD comes with a decent amount of bonus features. There are two “behind the scenes” featurettes – the first is the extended version of Cooker’s song, which basically comes down to behind the scenes stuff crossed with dailies. For the most part, this bit just proved the old saying that comedians are just failed rock stars.

“The Turkey” is a decent feature, showing what went into the filming of that scene. It’s just footage of people standing around and laughing at their hilarity (I was working on a theory that the director didn’t even try to reign in his actors during this shoot; this featurette clinched my theory by showing it in action). Though the sight of a turkey codpiece was fairly amusing, I did tire of Justin Long’s camera hogging (he got so close at one point in time that all his acne was in full view).

Another bonus feature was a string of improvisational bits called “What Do We Do?”. This bit is no more than a big comedic circle jerk, where everyone sits at a round table and applauds everyone else’s humor.

There are some deleted scenes (there’s usually a good reason why they’re deleted, people), and the Strange Wilderness episode of Reel Comedy, which was about as interesting as watching paint dry (though a bear acting as though he was about to eat Justin Long was a little amusing).

All in all, the film has a few choice moments and the DVD comes with a decent amount of bonus features. Though the movie isn’t so special, the extras will make it worth it for those who did enjoy it (and there are one or two people out there who did – I checked the internet just to be sure).

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