Mr. Bones

It's refreshing to see an Afrikaans film being better and funnier than it's American counter-parts. All Afrikaaners will be familiar with comedian Leon Schuster's work (particularly "You must be Joking") and he plays his character with his usual gusto and madness. The film is hilarious, proving that a juvenile sense of humor doesn't have to be bad thing (especially during the toilet scene). It's a fantastic movie with a great cast, inevitably overwhelmed by Schuster .

Obviously not everyone will be able to get the South African humor, or indeed, some of the stronger accents, and some could accuse the movie of going for cheap laughs and being unoriginal. But with a that said it still manages to blow most comedies out of the water. And besides, what's wrong with recycling some jokes if you do them better than they ever were in the first play. Hopefully this will help gain the South African film industry some momentum, but if it doesn't, well then we still get a cool movie out of it!

One thing that appears to be a safe assumption is that this movie isn't made for Germans or Austrians, all others read on!

As an American living in South Africa for the past two years, I probably have a bit more insight on the film than other foreigners, but I thought it was hilarious. I haven't laughed that hard at a movie since the slo-mo melon sequence in Ice Age.

Anyone who likes Adam Sandler or any of the American Pie films would at least appreciate this movie, even if they don't get all the intricacies of the jokes (you know, like a 300lb pig flying through the air like a cruise missile). Aside from shamelessly juvenile jokes, the film has a surprisingly tight story, and doesn't pretend to be anything it's not. The performances do the job, and all in all the movie's a riot. I had avoided seeing it for two years but recently caught it on DVD and was completely surprised. Easily makes 8/10, and is the best comedy I've seen in a long, long time.

I went to a sneak preview last week, where i saw Mr. bones. I didn't know that this movie would be shown. At the beginning i thought that it could be quite funny but i was completely wrong on that. It was so bad i couldn't help laughing about the fact that such a movie is even produced. Leon Schuster combines bad acting with a ridiculous story and even the jokes are not worth a smile. They are limited on people getting hammered down by excrements of several animals. 1 out of 10

"That's a good choice. You won't stop laughing. You'll laugh so your stomach will ache" said the officer when he saw 'Mr Bones' DVD in my hands. And I had no reason to think opposite.

DVD starts advertising new Schuster candid camera work. Well, for a trailer you can't put long jokes, so that's probably why these new pieces looked so pale and superficial, I told myself, still waiting for movie to start. Yankee Zulu was not a masterpiece, but had its charms, and some really great scenes. And Mr Bones was supposed to be much better.

However, you must be careful who will you trust. For someone who grew up with Austin Powers, matured with Porky's and American Pie and finds Scary Movie to be the ultimate comedy, Mr Bones can be a top pleasure to watch. But the rest of us have problems to understand what took Schuster eight years to finish the script. If he had completed it in first year of work, it would probably be much better, because bowel humor was not so popular then, and I guess we would be free of few tons of feces missiles precisely targeting actors' faces.

It is even more pity because the story isn't bad at all. Original - no, but comedy doesn't always ask for a brand new story; sometimes best scenes can be funny just because of similarity to something that everyone knows. Schuster also didn't fall into usual trap to focus too much on confrontation of two worlds. These movies were popular in 80's (Starman, Crocodile Dundee, E.T., Coming to America) and, as usual, too many copies make jokes repeat. Mr Bones contains few minutes of understandable misunderstandings, enough to stay unobtrusive (though one of them again concentrates on of body excretions, when he looks for toilette). And there is more logic in developing the plot than in many other modern movies, including Schuster's own ones.

Dialogues have never been Schuster's best side. In candid camera you can't plan them, so he sometimes neglects them in movies, too. The number of characters is rather big but each of them has personality (one more step forward for Schuster). And, unlike Schuster (co)author, Schuster actor was equal to his best roles. Music is used a lot, and it seems to be one of Hollywood influences (but this one well done).

Since Jamie Uys it seems that RSA movies made for foreign audience can't avoid a lot of animals. They may be exotic and thus attractive to Europeans and Americans (though for most of them cows and ducks are equally exotic as leopards), so it can help selling the movie. However, in Mr Bones birds fly only to drop their bowel contains on human noses (when Mel Brooks made that it was original and was integrated in the story), not to mention bigger animals. If a medium size bird is supposed to make a big laugh every time it empties its intestines, imagine what an epic movie would be made if someone could get a pterodactyl! (Remember, we're in the age of bird influenza...)

Apart from this type of humor (I use this word without believing in it), I noticed that the story, though settled in RSA (even some landscapes were the same or at least similar to Yankee Zulu), didn't show much about complicated relations between local races and nations as former Schuster's movies. And all this golf players and the whole movie can't hold a candle to a single scene taking part on golf terrain in Schuster's "Panic Mechanic". But since then Schuster obviously became a victim of Hollywood bowel-humor influence. I hope that a cure will be found soon enough.

This movie is actually very funny...the only problem is that if you come from USA or some other place you will never understand the South African humour in it...so if you are from the US then dont watch it...you wont get it...but if you are from South Africa...youll love it...i really loved this movie...because i am South African, it shows alot of things that happen in south africa and it really made me laugh, so i definitely recommend it to any South African who hasnt already seen it...if there are any South Africans who havnt seen it... this movie has been bad mouthed by many Americans and people in other countries simply because they just dont get it... so South Africans...Go watch it!! of course there are those exceptions of people from other countries other than South Africa who have experienced South African life and who will enjoy it.