Screenhead

When I first heard about Freezer Burn: The Invasion of Laxdale, I was absolutely convinced–like the sun will rise tomorrow convinced–that it was some kind of joke.  When they showed that poster with Crispin Glover with a partially exposed brain, and Tom-everlovin’-Green on the front, it had to be some kind of ridiculous April Fool’s joke.  No one would be dumb and / or desperate enough to put Tom Green in a movie that didn’t involve him fellating an elephant or something.

And then I got my hands on a copy…and it was true.  I was actually watching Tom Green try his level best to play a Serious Actor, and I was watching him fail.  Miserably.

The plot is fairly simple, and actually has a lot of parallels to modern times–the town of Laxdale is rapidly going under (you can tell from all the “for sale” signs all over everything), and when multinational petroleum company Gazcon declares its intent to build a refinery and employ the entire town, it seems like a blessing.  But there’s one holdout–former hockey star and now town loser Bill Swanson, who’s convinced that the Gazcon boys are hiding something.  With the weather unusually hot for November, and local folks starting to turn up dead, it’s looking more and more like Bill Swanson’s right about it.  And when Bill finds out that Gazcon is actually a front for aliens who want to convert Earth into a massive interplanetary Club Med, the gloves are off, in the literal AND metaphorical sense.

I can’t imagine why in the world they got Tom Green involved in this.  If they’d brought in some no-name this might’ve been a minor success, a science-fiction / horror / comedy hybrid with some good laughs and some genuinely attention-getting bits to it.  Oh, and I’ll give them due credit, they DO have some good laughs in here and some halfway decent science fiction–sci-fi is not easy to do on a low budget–but I just can’t help but be distracted by the massive impediment that is Tom Green’s presence.

It can be viewed with some consideration, knowin that this is actually a Canadian film and Tom Green is regarded as something of a celebrity in Canada, but still.  Watching this putz try to act seriously, try to act like an action hero, literally resonates with failure.

I will admit that this was a better movie than I thought it would be, mostly because I went into the movie expecting it to cause sterility in lab rats and give me intestinal cramping.  So the fact that I got a few half decent chuckles and a fairly solid science fiction movie out of it left me with something like a pleasant surprise.

Sure, I never want to see Tom Green in anything except the occasional “Where are they now” segment on VH1 or something, but this wasn’t a complete waste of time.  I can actually recommend a movie involving Tom Green, even if it’s not Tom specifically that’s fuelling my recommendation.  It’s a good rental, and frankly, that’s probably all it was ever really intended to be.

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