Some movies are content to settle for the lowest common denominator, combining trashy ethnic stereotypes, bathroom humor and cheesy slapstick jokes in the hope of luring audiences for a cheap laugh.
But some movies aspire to go even lower. “Furry Vengeance” is that movie.
Keep your children far away from this odious film about an unscrupulous developer who is bulldozing a forest to make room for houses and ultimately, “a shopping mall with a forest theme.” Brendan Fraser plays the local manager for the developer. He has moved his
wife Tammy (played by Brooke Shields) and his son Tyler (played by Matt Prokop) from Chicago to the small town of Rocky Springs to supervise the construction of a few homes, not realizing that the master plan is to demolish the entire forest. The woodland creatures
(led by a wily raccoon) have figured out the sinister plot and launch an insurrection against Frazer and his company to protect their forest.
The movie “Idiocracy” imagines a future day when our society will be so dumbed down that we will be entertained by TV shows consisting of nothing but jokes about a man being hit in the crotch. Well, gentle readers, that day is here. Brendan Fraser not only suffers the predictable “I-landed- on the peak of a roof and it went right into my crotch” pratfall, but also the “a raccoon is biting me the crotch and won’t let go” and even some new ones: after he has been submerged in the pond Fraser announces, “I need to remove a leech from my no-no zone.” Then there’s the time his woodland foes adjust his lawn sprinkler to spray him in the crotch and the embarrassed Frazer announces ” look at Mr. Pee-Pee pants.”
It’s hard to think of who might not be offended by this wretched movie. Frazer’s ruthless Asian boss from the home office talks in a screechy sing-song voice, relies on calculators, electronic gadgets and hand sanitizers. The equally unscrupulous money men from India fare no better (“If my Indian investors wanted to be reminded of pollution they would stay home in Calcutta. Stinko!”) And of course, the movie doesn’t miss the opportunity to make fun of the difference between American Indians and citizens of India (“Wigwam? Teepee? Squaw?”) Then there’s the stereotyped Mexican laborer at the construction site, or the elderly teacher who is senile and annoys everybody with her slow pace and long lapses.
The entire movie is speckled with excrement, both literally and figuratively. Brendan Fraser gets trapped in a port-a-potty which rolls over and over and gets turned upside down. Birds with extreme digestive problems dive-bomb their enemies and spatter them with bird poop. When the Indian financier is about to sign the contract, a big wad of excrement spatters on the document and a discussion ensues about who is going to clean it off. And when it seems the prop department might have run out of excrement, skunks spew thick clouds of noxious fumes and animals spray other bodily fluids on their beleaguered foes.
Gender is treated in an equally appalling way. Fraser, with soap in his eyes, reaches out for a towel and ends up drying his face with his wife’s bra, which then unaccountably slips onto his arms so that it looks like he has been wearing it. At this moment, the woodland creatures raise the curtains so that the construction workers outside believe Frazer is a cross-dresser. The animals further cement this idea when they trick Fraser into wearing his wife’s pink exercise outfit (with the words “yum yum” written on the butt) out in public.
Normally, I try to find something good to say about each movie I review. Dear readers, I am speechless.

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