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STOP OR I'LL SHOOT
Produced by Kevin D'Innocenzo and Sean Dwyer
Written and Directed by Jay CheelDet. Realston - Dave Johnson
Det. Fairchild - Sean DwyerIt doesn't take Einstein-like intelligence to realize that comedy + social commentary = satire. Nor do you have to be a rocket scientist to realize that good social commentary can be lost in comedy unless the film is question beats its points home like Hank Aaron making with the good-wood upside the viewer's head. But at what point does a movie cross the line from mere soapbox to political pulpit? How about when the movie goes all Mark McGuire.
It's easy to cross that line, all a filmmaker has to do is keep heaping the same points on top of the audience over and over again. It's creatine-induced, aluminum-fueled brain-smashing that's destined for failure and burnout. You can't cross home if you're busy beating a dead horse.
At least that's what I thought until I watched STOP OR I'LL SHOOT from underground filmmaking collective Pow Media. These guys step up to the plate and swing at every ball. If you don't at least try, you won't be breaking any league records, right?
STOP OR I'LL SHOOT has nothing to do with sports, or rocket science for that matter. It's a comedy about a world where sex is forced down the mouths of the public. It's not so much that everyone is doing it, it's just that there's so much bureaucratic redtape involved. A guy needs a week's worth of permits just to jerk off!
Man, I wouldn't last a day...
Lord only knows what would happen if you wanted some oral...
Detectives Realston and Fairchild are the sex police. Their job is to squash sexual freedom at its very core, the bedroom! Their methods are simple: education and leg work. When they aren't on the streets rousting the locals, they instruct classes on the ills of sexual freedom. As written by director Jay Cheel, the two provide a pretty convincing case.
With any good corrupt government comes an underground resistance movement. The LSO (Liberation of Sexual Oppression) plan to spread herpes to those that continue to fight for the sexual dictatorship. With the LSO closer than ever to securing a sex permit-free world than ever, Realston and Fairchild and going to have to go deep undercover to infiltrate and subvert the freedom fighters.
Realston and Fairchild are two floundering punchlines in a world populated by straightmen. Blinded by their own devotion to the law, they aren't cognizant of the world around them. They go through the day in a Leslie Neilson-like daze, blundering through their cases with an idiot's luck. If these men are representative of the powers that be, then viva la herpes.
Writer-director Cheel often breaks from the action to reveal how governmental control affects the daily lives of Joe and Jane Average. In a particularly amusing sequence, the scene comes straight from 1980's porno. A cable repairman, who has spent the day fixing boxes, finds his way to the home of a woman who can't afford to pay but is willing to work something out. The attraction and desire are there, but so is the thought of all the paperwork. Is it really worth the trouble just to get laid?
Cheel keeps the atmosphere strangely light and airy, contradicting the grimy visuals. The locations have that dirty feel one would think to find in a snuff film. This only adds to the disjointedly absurd nature surrounding the film's cautionary events. The result is disarmingly affective, and damned funny.
Yes, STOP OR I'LL SHOOT is a home run of a comedy that Einstein would love. What that means, I have no idea, but it seems to fit the movie and all that ridiculous baseball talk I started out with...