Tuesday, October 11, 2022

Yoga Hosers (2016)


Kevin Smith has been a divisive filmmaker for many years. People love him or they hate him. Part of it stems from how he has navigated the Hollywood system, from indie darling to touring his movies around the country because, as he says, nobody wanted to finance his ideas so he did it himself. I’m paraphrasing and generalizing the whole Red State debacle, but just go with me here. He created his own little niche area of the movie business and has turned out some interesting, though not always successful, things.

How does Kevin Smith fit into Sunday “Bad” Movies? There are three movies that people always pick from his filmography when they want to discuss his lesser work. Jersey Girl was the first one, released after he originally intended to close the book (literally, with Alanis Morisette closing a book at the end of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back) on his View Askewniverse. It didn’t fare too well, either critically or commercially, and he immediately went back to the Askewniverse with Clerks II (my pick for his best movie). Then there was Cop Out, the one time he directed a movie not based on his own script, and the one that felt the least like a Kevin Smith movie. Then there was this week’s movie.


Yoga Hosers was the second movie, following Tusk, in what Smith dubbed the True North Trilogy, though the third has yet to be made. Colleen (Harley Quinn Smith) and Colleen (Lily-Rose Depp) were two teenage girls working at Eh-2-Zed, a convenience store owned by one of their dads. On the night they planned to go to a senior party, they got forced into working. They weren’t even supposed to be there that day. Anyway, while on shift, they discovered Bratzis (Kevin Smith), a bunch of Nazi sausages, and had to fight to stop the next wave of Nazis from re-emerging and conquering Canada.

If that concept sounded a little messy, let me assure you that the movie was just as messy as it sounded. It was a mishmash of ideas that sometimes never came together in a cohesive way. There were Nazi sausages. There were characters who had both Canadian accents and New York accents at the same time. There was a satanic murder subplot that went nowhere. The big villain showed up and laid out his whole plan while doing impressions of famous actors. Johnny Depp even showed up as his Quebecer detective from Tusk to try and solve another series of grisly murders. Writer/director Kevin Smith threw everything at the movie, and it didn’t all stick.

What I want to write about, however, is that Yoga Hosers wasn’t nearly as bad as most people insisted it was. It was fine. There was nothing special about it. There was nothing that stood out as a great moment or a great bit of entertainment. But it did enough that it was easily palatable. There was enough to it that it was memorable, albeit not necessarily in a good way. Yoga Hosers was a mess of a movie, but it was a watchable mess of a movie that didn’t feel like a waste of time. Here are some of the things it did well enough to keep it from being utterly terrible.


The thing about Yoga Hosers that most impressed me was its sense of tone. Say what you will about the individual ideas and how well they did or didn’t fit together, Kevin Smith had a tone in mind while making the movie and really nailed that tone. The two Colleens were a middle-aged man’s idea of stereotypical teenage girls, heightened to the point of farce. They were sarcastic and insulting to everyone but themselves. They liked to sing and dance, ignoring their work duties to have fun. Then there was their obsession with their phones, something that structured the whole story.

Let me elaborate on the phone thing. There are two main ways that the phones structured the story. One was the introduction of the characters. Nearly every character was introduced through an Instagram-like profile page. It was an app that the girls were obsessed with, which was why they weren’t suspicious when the most popular guy in school wanted to invite them to a senior party (he planned on murdering them, not partying). They were only active on social media, not through face-to-face social interactions. They had no real friends, making them the perfect candidates to be sacrificially murdered. The other reason was that their main goal was always to get their phones back. They got their phones taken away while at school and never felt whole until getting them back at the end of the day. Then they were arrested after the botched murders because the police thought they murdered the guys trying to murder them, but it was the Bratzis that did the killing. They went along with Guy LaPointe’s investigation because they wanted their phones back. Their story chugged along because of the phones, even if the story wasn’t about the phones at all.


Another aspect of Yoga Hosers that was well done was the world building. Sure, the building blocks were laid out in Tusk, the previous movie in the True North Trilogy. Yoga Hosers built on that foundation by expanding on the Winnipeg of Kevin Smith’s imagination. Much like in the previous film, the Canada that was shown was a heightened world of stereotypes. People said “aboot” and “eh” a lot. The convenience store was called “Eh-2-Zed.” People were, mostly, friendly. At least, they put on friendly façades. Aside from the Nazis and Bratzis.

Speaking of which, the Nazi history of Winnipeg in Yoga Hosers was an interesting addition to the world that Kevin Smith built. The True North Trilogy seemed to really be hitting on Nazis getting the comeuppance they deserved. Tusk had Justin Long and Haley Joel Osment playing two hosts for a podcast called The Not See Party. Yoga Hosers saw Haley Joel Osment return to play the leader of the Canadian Nazi party in flashbacks. According to the lore, the Canadian branch of the Nazi party was centred in Winnipeg. It was a growing party until the leader was arrested by the feds and his right-hand man went into hiding. That hiding would later be revealed to be a cryogenic freeze that he woke up from in present time. This world-building tied historical fiction into the horror comedy.


The final thing worth mentioning about Yoga Hosers that made it a fine movie was the cast. Much of it was lined with Kevin Smith regulars. Kevin Smith played the Bratzis. His daughter was one of the Colleens. Jason Mewes popped up for a scene. Ralph Garman was the right-hand man to the Canadian Fuhrer. Justin Long was in there as a yoga instructor. And Smith’s wife played the mother of the Colleen his daughter played. But then there were other actors brought in to fill out other roles, and they were mostly good in those roles. Johnny Depp, Haley Joel Osment, Harley Morenstein, and Genesis Rodriguez all returned from Tusk as different characters. Austin Butler, Tony Hale, Natasha Lyonne, Tyler Posey, Sasheer Zamata, and Stan Lee all showed up as well. They all seemed to be having fun in their roles even if some of them were really struggling with that Canadian accent (Natasha Lyonne and Stan Lee could barely cover their true accents). It was just an all-around fun cast to watch as they had fun making a dumb horror comedy.


I’m not here to say that Yoga Hosers was a masterpiece or anything like that. I’d agree that it wasn’t all that good. What I disagree with is people saying that it was a terrible movie. Yoga Hosers was fine. It had a consistent tone. It built an interesting little world, albeit not accurate at all to the Canada that I live in and know. And it had actors who may not have turned in the best performances, but were clearly having fun being in the goofy movie. There’s a lot of stuff out there that doesn’t even have those qualities. There’s a lot of stuff out there that is worse.

I wouldn’t even say that Yoga Hosers is the worst thing that Kevin Smith has worked on. He didn’t direct Vulgar, sure, but his success led to his friend being able to. That one was much worse. Then there was Cop Out. I haven’t seen that one in a few years. Smith did direct that one, based on a script he didn’t write, and it was just a very middle of the road movie. Nothing stood out about it beyond a small Seann William Scott role. It didn’t have the same sort of charm that Yoga Hosers had through the three things I mentioned, and I would argue that makes Cop Out the worse movie. I don’t know. Yoga Hosers was fine.

People have their own opinions on Kevin Smith. They either like him or they don’t, and they’ve got many reasons why. I tend to enjoy his work. For the most part, that is. There’s usually some heart and sincerity to his work that few other filmmakers tend to include. It makes even his most farcical and fantastic ideas hit home. They resonate. That’s why I’ll always be up for a new Kevin Smith movie. The world is better for him being out here releasing things.


Now for some notes:

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