Men & Chicken

Although some might classify this eccentric Danish film as a “comedy,” it's really more like a circus freakshow: the funny is so faint that it does not even qualify as “gonzo” humor. Director Anders Thomas Jensen's Men & Chicken centers on two hare-lipped brothers who were the subjects of failed interspecies genetic experiments by their mad-scientist father. When the brothers find out they were given up for adoption, they decide to travel to a remote island where their other long-lost brothers supposedly live with their father. Elias (Mads Mikkelsen) is an unhinged chronic masturbator, and Gabriel (David Dencik) is a crackpot philosopher, yet the pair prove to be the pick of the litter: their brothers are mentally disturbed genetic abominations who commit casual bestiality and routinely beat each other with iron pots and taxidermized animals. As it turns out, father has long since passed on, but Gabriel in particular becomes unhealthily obsessed with the lingering secrets of dad's demented genetic experiments. Most of the film is set at the dilapidated, unhygienic old mansion where the clan of misfit brothers live, but while the film scores some points for weirdness, it's only a comedy if you think grown men pummeling each other with stuffed animals is funny. Optional. (M. Sandlin)