Does anyone else find it kind of strange that the writer/director of Napoleon Dynamite (Jared Hess) is directing a film that stars Mike White (the writer of The School of Rock, Orange County, The Good Girl). No? Moving on. Gentlemen Broncos is Hess’ follow up to Nacho Libre. It’s about a home-schooled teenager who gets shipped off by his mother (Jennifer Coolidge) to the best writer’s camp in the state, only to have a famous fantasy author (Flight of the Conchords’ Jermaine Clement) steal his material, add some questionable suffixes, and turn his hero into a trannie. In the trailer, Sam Rockwell (who has become the Kevin Bacon of indie film) acts out scenes from both “versions” of the book.
Our gut reaction is that it feels like Napoleon Dynamite meets Waiting for Guffman — but seems to lack the luster of both of those works. That said, we’ve been waiting for this trailer for a while, thanks to a detailed microsite for Clement’s character that has been up for over a year, so it’s possible that our expectations were just set too high. It’s also likely that any funny fantasy references went straight over our heads.
Gentlemen Broncos opens in theaters October 30. Are you planning to check it out?