Quasi (2023 | USA | 99 minutes | Kevin Heffernan)
The biggest laugh I had watching Quasi, the new movie from the Broken Lizard comedy troupe, was about midway and I began remembering a Seinfeld episode where George tried to rent the movie to Breakfast at Tiffany’s in lieu of reading the Truman Capote novel. The idea of anyone watching this movie to avoid reading the Victor Hugo classic The Hunchback at Notre Dame is just hilarious to me. The protagonist of The Hunchback is named Quasimodo. Beyond that, the book and film go on two wildly divergent paths.
In this telling from the Broken Lizard team (Super Troopers, Club Dread), the year is 1186 France and Quasimodo (Steve Lemme) makes torture devices. He’s a loveable, harmless, area man who builds torture devices for a living. There’s a rivalry between the power-hungry King Guy (Jay Chandrasekhar) and the power-hungry Pope Cornelius (Paul Soter). From what I can tell, France has never had a King Guy and Pope Cornelius reigned from 251 to 253 AD. There’s also a weird attraction between Quasimodo and newlywed Queen Catherine (Adrianne Palicki) that turns into a sweet love story.
Quasimodo wins a drawing that grants him a private audience with the Pope. King Guy sees it as an opportunity to get Quasi to assassinate his rival. The Pope meanwhile expects Quasi to assassinate King Guy. Hilarity ensues.
There were a lot of funny gags (and a lot more that didn’t land with me). There is one running bit I found particularly funny, it’s about a character getting taller each time we see him. I wouldn’t say the humor was as witty as a Mel Brooks movie or something from Monty Python but I enjoyed the pace and the sheer quantity of jokes. The humor might be juvenile and border on scatological but it is in no way the dumbest movie I saw this month. Compared to the truly bad Renfield, Quasi looks like it came straight out of the humor pages of the New Yorker.
It seems like I review a lot of movies that are aimed at a certain demographic that appreciates a certain type of unpretentious and unsophisticated humor, which I am very much a part of. I don’t think this movie will convert any people to becoming Broken Lizard fans, unless there are more people out there who relish in jokes about nailing scrotums to tree stumps than I thought, but it will absolutely delight the people who are already fans.
Quasi premiered today on Hulu. It can be streamed now.