LITTLE ROCK — Gently subversive and disarmingly good-natured, Eli Craig’s Tucker & Dale vs. Evil is a genre-blending exercise in the mode of Shaun of the Dead, with a winking nod to such terror-in-the-boonies pictures as Deliverance, Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever and the various Texas Chainsaw Massacres. It has, and deserves, an audience, some of whom no doubt will be would be auteurs bummed that Craig has beat them to the punch.
The premise of this well-executed but relatively unambitious bit of meta-horror is that our earnest, but scary-looking heroes Tucker (Tyler Labine) and Dale (Alan Tudyk) are West Virginia backwoods innocents who’ve just bought the dilapidated lake house of their dreams.
They’re mistaken for homicidal maniacs by a group of mean-spirited (and homosexual-hating) college kids led by the ultra-preppie Chad (Jesse Moss), who wears the collar of his powder-blue polo shirt turned up. (Remember Tom Cruise in Taps? Chad’s a similar sociopath.) After an accident befalls the beautiful Ally (Katrina Bowden, from 30 Rock), Tucker and Dale’s rescue of her is perceived as kidnapping. And so ensues a comedy of mis-communication and error that leads to many over-the-top accidental deaths.
Yet while the slapstick violence - too silly to genuinely offend - is the movie’s calling card, the real humor resides in the sharp dialogue, and especially the fine, almost naturalistic performances by Labine and Tudyk. You’ll like these characters, even if you wish they were in a different movie.
Still, even if the movie plays like an 89-minute Saturday Night Live skit, it’s one of the better SNL skits of recent years.
Tucker & Dale vs. Evil 87 Cast: Alan Tudyk, Tyler Labine, Katrina Bowden, Jesse Moss, Philip Granger, Brandon Jay McLaren, Christie Laing, Chelan Simmons, Travis Nelson Director: Eli Craig Rating: R, for bloody horror violence, language and brief nudity Running time: 89 minutes
MovieStyle, Pages 38 on 09/30/2011