Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘Yoga Hosers’

Written by Mike Cervantes 

How do you solve a problem like Kevin Smith’s? After his last continuity film, 2001’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was put in the can, the actor/director/writer made a fair attempt at legitimizing himself as a mainstream director. Sadly, his attempts which included Jersey Girl, and Zack and Miri Make a Porno, failed to capture the hearts and minds of a film critic-bedecked box office oriented-film industry. Understandably, he went rogue, and is now producing films from ideas he’s drawn exclusively from his sole creative outlet, the SMODcast podcast, producing them on tiny indy budgets too, and overseeing limited releases of them to surprisingly, still mainstream theaters. I’d like to say the results have been a mixed bag, although it’s more accurate to say that it’s a bag of something that severely needs to be mixed.

​His latest film in this SMODcast format is Yoga Hosers, the second in a proposed, or rather threatened, trilogy of films that take place in an especially paranormal-inflicted area of Canada. The two recurring sets of characters in these films are Guy LaPointe, a semi-celebrity paranormalist played with prosthetic makeup by Johnny Depp, and this film’s two main protagonists: Colleen Collette, and Colleen McKenzie, played by Lily-Rose Depp and Harley Quinn Smith, the daughters of said movie star and director.

“The Colleens” began their film presence as a relatively clever idea for a cameo in Kevin Smith’s previous film, 2014’s Tusk, wherein a father places his daughter and his leading man’s daughter in the role of a pair of convenience store clerks, a nod to the movie which gave Hollywood Kevin Smith. It’s often a losing proposition to take a pair of characters who were onscreen for ten minutes and make them the stars. He pulled it off with reasonable success using Jay and Silent Bob, and I have to admit, it actually does work in this film as well. Lily-Rose and Harley Quinn aren’t in any way playing against type, they’re a pair of modern fifteen-year olds, who have sung in bands and, likely, participated in shopping mall yoga while posting liberally on Instagram. They have a simple charm which, in the spirit of Smith’s other two-person protagonist roles, allow them to play off their supporting cast with a joy that can only come from two teenagers casually outsmarting every adult around them.

That much of the movie works, but the major downside is while the Colleens are infinitely wonderful in this movie, every single other character is awful. I’d call them all human cartoons, but even that is being way too generous. It’s more like The Colleens live in a world made up of ill-conceived, one-joke SNL characters, hopping on screen wearing a bad wig or possessing a prosthetic zit, doing five minutes of painfully unfunny shtick and then disappearing completely. It’s simply amazing how many times this happens, whether it’s Adam Brody as Ichabod, the tattooed and muscled thirty year old drummer in The Colleens’ band, Austin Butler and Tyler Posey as Hunter Calloway and Gordon Greenleaf, The Colleen’s hot-and-not high school love interests, or Justin Long as self-absorbed yoga instructor Yogi Bayer, who flies into a rage over cease-and-decist phone calls from Warner Bros. It just goes on and on. Even Johnny Depp vamps through this film in a manner not unlike Mike Myers, allowing the gobs of lumpy prosthetics to completely disguise his non-commitment to Kevin Smith’s brilliant character creation.

By the time this movie laugh-tracks into its second act, an absurd concept involving a mad Nazi scientist and his army of 6 inch tall Nazi bratwurst clones, everyone in the SMODCast playground has gotten into the act. Kevin Smith uses prosthetic makeup and loads of CG replication of himself to play the “bratzis,” characters that straddle the line between the Despicable Me’s Minions and Troma-grade movie monsters, dispensing with their victims by climbing up their backside and...inserting themselves in a most uncomfortable place. The third act reveal of the Nazi scientist Andronicus Arcane, played by SMODCo regular Ralph Garman, falls embarrassingly flat, as Garman uses this pivotal role to perform every vocal impression that comes off the top of his head, from Al Pacino to Ed Wynn. Seriously, when you see a man in a Nazi costume impersonating 1950s-character actor Ed Wynn, that’s the moment your brain shuts completely down. Even Garman is used to the same disposable end as any other character, since his presence is used to set up a final boss fight with a lame monster costume that makes the Golgothan from Dogma look like a damn Brian Froud illustration.

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​This movie just smacks of the simple arrogance of a writer/director who’s not being warned that his work is uninspired. The end credits include a snippet from an SMODcast where they jokingly invent the title of the film, while the movie itself peppers “Yoga Hosers” throughout, as if it is actually intended to catch on as some sort of ethnic slur. Part of Arcane’s sinister plot involves him murdering all of the art critics of the world, an ideal that Depp’s LaPointe would actually permit, as “at least he’s not murdering anyone human.” This is the kind of filmmaking that spawned works like Leonard: Part Six, or The Love Guru, and Kevin Smith remains gleeful that whatever he produces, no matter how awful, will nonetheless get made, exactly the way he wants it. ​

There really isn’t much more to say. I’ve described everything I possibly could have about the substance Yoga Hosers provides, and still remain roughly 200 words short of a full review. And although I’m more than certain it’s going to end up wasted, I’d like to take what few words I have left, and write a small, meaningful appeal to Kevin Smith.

​Kevin…

It’s become all too obvious that you’ve been severely burned by the critics in your career, and to a certain extent, you’re absolutely right. Movies like Jersey Girl and Zack and Miri deserved a bigger chance than they got…I assume…I never actually watched either of those films. In the past, though, you’ve turned out some of the movies that have made me a true fan of the silver screen. You’ve inspired me to take whatever I have at any given time, and hopefully, one day, create something that’s just as culturally significant as Clerks was to me.
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In all honestly, there’s no need to despair. The Kevin Smith that made that awesome movie is still in you. It’s evident in every scene with Lily-Rose and Harley Quinn, because you made this movie with the intent of establishing them as admirable people and wonderful actors.
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But along with the intent, there also has to be a sense of meaning; of unexplored universal truths contained in your writing. Ideas that extend far beyond casual jokes made on a regular podcast.

You once took a monologue about independent contractors on the Death Star and made it into an allegory about the futility of human existence. I still have hope that one day that something just as brilliant, will be the Kevin Smith movie I’ll see when next I step into a theater.

But, oh hell, you’ve got the ball, bring on the Moose Jaws…

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