Gentlemen Broncos

Writer-director Jared Hess, who had a surprise smash in Napoleon Dynamite, tries to mine the same thematic vein with this supposedly sympathetic but actually condescending look at social outcasts. Benjamin (Michael Angarano) is a pathetic doofus, a Utah teen who lives with his dingbat mother, Judith (Jennifer Coolidge), in a geodesic dome. An ultra-geeky kid, Benjamin scribbles sci-fi tales featuring a scraggly hero called Bronco. When Benjamin goes to a writers camp, his idol—has-been author Dr. Ronald Chevalier (Jemaine Clement)—steals his manuscript, makes minor changes (such as transforming Bronco from a space cowboy to a fey white-haired weirdo), and turns it into his comeback book. The same story is also appropriated by oddballs Tabatha and Lonnie (Halley Feiffer and Héctor Jiménez), who adapt it as one of their no-budget movies. The major plot thread follows Benjamin's attempts to go after the plagiarist, although the film also features “dramatized” scenes from the boy's work in no less than three forms—from his own imagination, Chevalier's rewrite, and the atrocious movie adaptation (all are presumably meant to convey a B-movie aesthetic, but make Ed Wood seem like a gifted auteur by comparison). An excruciating, garishly offbeat film, Gentlemen Broncos is not recommended. (F. Swietek)