When I wrote about the marketing campaign for Kevin Smith’s Yoga Hosers I was left a bit dumbfounded. If you removed the director’s name from the assets it would be difficult, if not impossible, to guess that he was involved in any way as there’s nothing here that’s in-line with what he’s become known for over the last 20+ years.

Yoga hosers pic 2

Here’s the movie’s story in a nutshell: Two best friends, both named Colleen (Harley Quinn Smith and Lily-Rose Depp) who are bored in their Canadian teen lives working at a small convenience store. One day they’re invited to a senior party but wind up not being able to go. That same night, as they’re stuck at work, a Nazi sympathizer long thought dead returns and unleashes his army of bratwurst-based soldiers on the world to finally bring Hitler’s dream to reality. It’s up to the Colleens to stop him, them and save themselves.

Yeah.

The movie is every bit as insane as the premise would have you guess. It’s filled with exactly the kind of physical humor and sight gags you’d expect from a movie that features a handful of foot-tall bratwurst Nazi soldiers.

What’s missing, though, is any sense of fun. That’s a crazy premise and could be a lot of fun, but there’s no pacing or writing that would support it or make it kind of amusing. Smith has never been a visually-inventive filmmaker and that was fine when he was making movies about hanging out in malls or the romantic travails of a couple of comic book creators. But when the stakes are a bit higher and the story relies on the visuals being convincingly conveyed, that turns into a real liability.

The campaign more or less conveyed that it was going to be a big, crazy Canadian adventure and that’s what was delivered. The one area the movie over-delivered on based on the marketing is just how much of a mess the finished film actually is.