Margaux and I continue to trudge through the holidays with the disappointing Pottersville.
Trevor: So the elevator pitch for Pottersville is basically “Michael Shannon, a two-time Oscar nominee and one of the most intense actors alive, plays a mild-mannered shopkeeper who discovers that his wife and the sheriff are secret furries, so he dresses up like Bigfoot and ends up saving the town.” That sounds crazy. It is crazy – on paper. For such a crazy plot, Pottersville was curiously dull in some places. I wanted more from this one. How did you feel?
Margaux: Bored, mostly. I kept waiting for it to get crazy because as you touched on above, and when you texted me this movie suggestion when we were pulling our list together, sounded fucking bonkers. But it’s kinda sleepy, not all that funny movie, and makes Jingle All The Way 2 seem entertaining in hindsight.
Trevor: A lot the time it was barely a Christmas movie. I almost texted you to apologize. But it tied back in at the very end. I will say, the fact that this movie exists is insane. I think I’d prefer to see a movie about the conception and production of Pottersville.
Margaux: They’re basically sitting on their very own Man from La Mancha.
Trevor: Who the hell pitched this to Michael Shannon? Why did he say yes? That guy got an Oscar nomination earlier this year.
Margaux: Pottersville definitely has the most perplexing cast. Ian McShane, Judy Greer, an offensively underused Christina Hendricks, and Ron fucking Perlman – who is also a producer, maybe he talked Shannon into it? It wants to try to do too many things (small town going outta business, Christmas movie, romance, comedy) and does not succeed at any of it. First of all, everyone constantly conflates what is clearly a gorilla with actual Big Foot. HOW? On top of Michael Shannon also not being able to differentiate between a squirrel and wolf. DOUBLE HOW? Most of all, Pottersville seemed to want to be a spin on a new type Christmas tale because the way the people in this town treat a Bigfoot sighting is as if Santa himself fucking showed up.
Trevor: I will say there was one thing I loved, which was when Maynard (Shannon) came home and heard his wife and the sheriff making barking noises. His reaction, which was hilarious coming from Michael Shannon, is: “No way! Did she get a puppy?” That’s about the only time I really laughed, except for one or two bits with Thomas Lennon.
Margaux: It was also hard to get a handle on time and place. Like, seriously, what fucking year does this take place in? The production design looked like it was refurbished from Pleasantville, but they were modern enough to know who Thomas Lennon’s Bear Grylls-Jeff Probst character was from TV. And then there’s the nonchalant attitude the whole town has about a possible Bigfoot sighting, everybody acts like it’s a completely normal, expected occurrence. I wrote in my notes, “is everyone under a spell?”
Trevor: I kind of liked the aesthetic a little bit, but that’s because I found the coffee shop/cafe/general store to be more or less adorable. But I agree, this would make so much more sense if it were a period piece, instead of intentionally muddling the timeline like this.
Margaux: I actually like the indoor sets a lot, but would get distracted by them. Partly due to boredom, and partly because there was a disconnect between the characters’ actions and the setting.
Trevor: That’s fair; some of the cinematography was kind of pretty.
Margaux: Speaking of characters’ actions, apart from Judy Greer and Michael Shannon getting together at the end, I could not figure out a single person’s motivation half the time. Well, I understand what drives Michael Shannon’s decision to dress up as a gorilla, but not anything that comes after it. If Judy Greer didn’t spend most of her on-screen time telling Maynard (Shannon) what a good man he is, I wouldn’t know anything about him besides that his wife is a furry and he owns a general store.
Trevor: God, poor Judy Greer gets stuck in the worst fuckin’ movies. She deserves so much better; everyone in this show does. There are cast members here from Deadwood, Boardwalk Empire, Sons of Anarchy, Arrested Development, and Mad Men, not to mention Reno 911. If you just described this movie to me, I’d love it, which is probably where we should have left it.
Margaux: That’s because not a lot happens after Maynard gets dressed up as a (drunk) gorilla, running around town, drinking out of peeing fountains and what not. Every time after that gets more and more dull, like you can tell he doesn’t want to do anymore. Even when Thomas Lennon shows up and Christina Hendricks begins to have a crush on him, I think? Nothing really happen. Everyone is too easy going and accepting of their reality for any tension, comedic or dramatic, to build.
Trevor: Agreed, Hendricks’ crush on Lennon isn’t explored at all. Lennon is fun, more or less, and I think he does a good job making words like “Squatch” or “sap” funny with repetition. This is a boring damn movie, and I’m kinda looking for bright spots here. I mean, these are a bunch of actors I like, so if nothing else I’m glad they got paid.
Margaux: Right. McShane is the town’s grizzled…man (it is unclear what exactly makes him this way, but he makes and drinks his moonshine. Maybe that’s it?). He gets recruited by Lennon to accompany him on his Squatch hunt and all they find is a furry rave in the middle of a snowy forest. Oh, and Ron Perlman is there too, but not in his furry outfit, he’s in his regular sheriff’s one. Oh no, I’ve fallen asleep again.
Trevor: By the time they stumble upon a furry party in the forest, it should be funny and bizarre and emblematic of the go-for-broke attitude with which the film was made. It should be. But somehow that’s boring too! I had such high hopes for Pottersville. Whenever you and I watch something so bad it becomes kind of great (like, I don’t know, BMX Bandits) I recommend it to people. I’m, uh, not going to be recommending Pottersville any time soon (but I did tell my brother that Surviving Christmas is surprisingly funny).
Margaux: I have recommended Surviving Christmas to several people because it is, what we in the biz call, a good-bad movie. But there are two-to-three things about Pottersville that still bug me. One: how does being a furry and Bigfoot go together? Two: An entire town WANTED to meet Bigfoot, where did all these people come from and who hurt them? Three: Maynard initially became Bigfoot to win back his wife (I think?), but ended up simultaneously ruining the town and then saving it, and he ends up opening a Bigfoot museum. Was that museum…about…himself?
Trevor: That’s true, how can you start a Bigfoot museum if there was never a fuckin’ Bigfoot in the first place.
Margaux: THAT’S WHAT I’M SAYING! WHAT THE FUCK, DID THIS MOVIE INCEPT ME?
Trevor: Do you want to talk Pottersville any more, or do you want to give this thing some coal?
Margaux: Yes, let’s end this. An honest to goodness waste of talent and effort on a weird, but not quite weird enough, painfully disjointed and boring movie. As Michael Shannon says as his last line in Pottersville, “What are you gonna do?”
4/5 lumps of coal
About Author
