Hell & Back (2015)

Sadly Over-hyped

Load of rubbish!!

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Blistering performances.

"Hell and Back" is one of the weirder stop motion films I have ever seen. This is not because of its visuals or choices per se, but because I'm not sure who it's for. It's not for children (Seriously, don't let a child watch this accidentally) and it's really not for teens either. Though much of the humor is more juvenile, the film is so self-hating and needlessly dire that it seems to be geared more towards exactly no one. Directed by Ross Shuman and Tom Gianas, "Hell and Back" is a little seen and greatly hated venture that will remain a blight on all those involved.The story follows three men (?) who work at a pier carnival, and have been best friends since childhood. Played by Nick Swarsdon, TJ Miller, and Rob Riggle, they seem to be ridiculously childish in their approach to life, but love each other like brothers. Two of the friends make a blood oath in front of a book with a crying devil, which sends one of them to Hell. The other two follow him to the bowels of the beast and try to save him from his untimely fate.The film delves into their misery right off the bat and makes several jokes, including one about an old woman's vagina, and is preceded by homophobia. While all those involved are accomplished (Mila Kunis, Bob Odenkirk, Susan Sarandon etc.) none of them are working with much, and therefore most of the jokes fall flat. The only time when Orpheus' jokes really land is when Nick Swarsdon's character gets off a zinger or characters are bantering. Otherwise a lot of this is simply obnoxious. It's unclear what is up with the Devil's facade, why we need a shot of Mila Kunis' purple devil in nothing but a tank top and underwear, why Orpheus is such a tool, why there is a distended running joke about male rape via a tree, or why the ending is so swift and easy, making the entire film pointless.There are some good jokes peppered here and there but for the most part everyone involved is just too good for this movie. I seriously want to know what the filmmakers are holding over Susan Sarandon for her to even think about giving voice to the angel Barb. Besides getting to see some pretty great stop motion and hear some okay one-liners, there's no reason you have to see this film.

Seriously, if The Devil had a review for "Hell and Back" it would be given a big whopping ZERO! And let me start by saying one of my all time favorite films is Evil Dead. And to have this movie take a scene(even if they didn't get it from Evil Dead) was a big slap to my face. It was like stealing a joke and trying to add on to it and thinking it was the best joke they came up with when truly it was garbage.Short review here- Try Fantastic Four(2015) first, if you like that, then waste your time here as well! For both are awful!The movie was about a hour and thirty minutes, but felt like I was in Hell all along, eternal damnation. I was so thankful that it did end! Knowing I wasn't in Hell, but maybe that was the point all along, a movie so bad it made you feel like you were in Hell. But regardless, every single joke, if you call them jokes, stupid. Hold on, let me find a bigger word, GODAWFUL! Hah! I believe it was twice, it showed The Devil crying from a book. Actually tears rolling down it. I truly want to believe that The Devil was crying for how he was portrayed in the movie. At how bad the movie was. I mean, can you imagine making this movie, and having it turn out The Devil is truly alive and you get sent to Hell thanks to being the writer and director for this movie? I mean good luck to the director, writer, whoever had a part of creating this movie. Because he will not go easy on them like they showed within the movie."Welcome to Hell" - Demons. All the demons would say that, if you ask me, maybe the movie was bad on purpose to show this is what Hell really is. But I highly doubt they meant for that, so I gave it a one star, and by God I haven't done that in awhile!! From the start, the very start it became annoying and horrendous. I don't think I cracked a smile throughout the entire film. Needless to say, one part of the movie I did chuckle. A part I don't even remember, but it got one small chuckle from me. Otherwise I was wondering when the movie would be over. "Migraines in Hell are really bad."- Remy. Watching the movie was Hell. Having a migraine thanks to the movie equals Migraine in Hell. That quote spoke to me. Lot of random scenes, conversations, music especially, and just nothing felt right. Felt like they were talking fast and rushing the movie going from one part to the next. But kept adding more and more when you think the bloody movie was gonna end. Ton of stupid F bombs, sex jokes that were outdated, a slow mo part that had me wonder how I made it this far. Horrible stop animation. A movie that could have gone somewhere, but was destroyed. Plot/Story is what caught my attention, that and dark humor. Crushed is a good word to use after watching the movie and realizing this is what we got. The cast, which I hate to say about the actors and actresses, but I couldn't stand any of them. Bob Odenkirk was a supreme lawyer in Breaking Bad, but as the Devil? Kinda just annoyingly stupid. Mila Kunis is on a bad movie streak, coming also from Jupiter Ascending(EWW!) in the same year. All the other actors and actresses were either annoying to hear their voices or just couldn't stand them. Almost every single one of them I try to avoid because they all have the same character in all their films/jokes. In conclusion, because I rather just stop myself now, the movie was a waste. A waste of time to me. A waste of money to make. A waste of space on IMDb. Start to finish, a crappy introduction, migraine throughout the middle, and complete let down for an ending. Thanks for reading the review and hopefully you read it before watching the film!!

Hell and Back is for all intense and purposes a cinematic inevitability. TV today is filled to the brim with adult cartoon shows catering to a certain male demographic trapped in a state of arrested development. The best of these shows are every bit as artful, thoughtful and entertaining as any 30-minute sitcom. Yet for every Bob's Burgers (2011-present) and Archer (2009-present) there's a cringe-worthy time-waster like American Dad! (2005-present) that threatens to derail the entire adult toon genre with gleeful insult humor and lazy references.Hell and Back is brought to you by the same stop-motion studios as Robot Chicken (2005-present) a fifteen minute sketch show involving action figures and claymation figures. The plot revolves around three underachieving friends who work at a rundown pier side carnival. Curt (Riggle) assistant manages while Remy (Swardson) works primarily on the Hell's Gate ride featuring a few cheap scares for the price of a few dollars and your dignity. Augie (Miller), the chubby third wheel of the group works as the mechanic, or at least I think he does; it doesn't really matter. What does matter is the trio come across a demonic book, Curt swears a blood oath on it, immediately renigs and is dragged to hell. Remy and Augie follow him and face demons, assorted tortures and the Devil (Odenkirk) himself to save their friend from eternal damnation.As with Robot Chicken, the animation style in this film evokes the memory of Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas (1987) only with a displeasing slurry of dirty jokes and adult situations. The same sophomoric, sporadic and anarchic humor we've seen on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim lineup debuts on the big screen only without pathos, perspective, immediacy, topicality or energy. All of the humor is crude for the sake of being crude as if two twelve-year-old boys wrote the script and had a quota for the amounts of f***s, s***s and q****s they were required to squeeze in.Don't get me wrong, I'm no shrinking violet when it comes to crude, rude and politically incorrect jokes. I don't raise my nose at George Carlin's seven words you can't say on TV or the occasionally funny Family Guy (1999-present) gag. But crudeness for crudeness sake does not a good movie make. The film features bluntly stated dialogue discussing lewd sex acts, the shame of virginity in your 20's and one unbearably drawn-out discussion of tree rape that is brought up several times. Ironically the jokes that made me chuckle the hardest were the subtle ones such as a soul being tortured by a demon by trying to order a pepperoni pizza from a Taco Bell/Pizza Hut Express.Those of you who are a fan of ShadowMachine Films and their genre expanding TV shows will be mightily disappointed by this stop-motion slacker comedy. Despite some funny one-off jokes, Hell and Back has precious few redeeming qualities outside it's talented voice cast. The movie's dialogue is crass and confusing while it's sight-gags are obvious and undeveloped. The story is awful featuring three obnoxious leads who learn nothing from their experience; other than maybe devil's brew is delicious. The side characters are worse still including an ineffective devil, a boring tag-along in Mila Kunis's half-human, half-demon Deema, and an especially braggadocios Orpheus (McBride). Do yourself a favor, miss this trip to hell and watch a few episodes of BoJack Horseman (2014-present), a show that better represents a descent into hell. It's also so much funnier.

"Hell & Back" poses a sharp contrast in quality between the wealth of its talented voice cast and the sheer pedestrian mediocrity of its screenplay. It's amazing that a barrage of talented and proved comics from the likes of T.J. Miller, Mila Kunis, Bob Odenkirk, and J.B. Smoove, would subject themselves to something so bland and ugly. From its choppy stop-motion style of animation, its lack of real creativity in its jokes, and its miserable color palette, there is a striking joylessness present in "Hell & Back" that is only highlighted by the film's lackluster writing.The story opens in a failing theme-park, largely run by slacker employees Remy (voiced by Nick Swardson), Augie (T.J. Miller), and Curt (Rob Riggle). When Curt borrows a mint from Remy, taking a blood oath to pay him back before reneging on his promise shortly after, the three are sucked into a vortex that takes them to Hell, where they are seen as "mortals" awaiting sacrifice. While Curt is the only one who is set to be sacrificed, for breaking a blood oath, Remy and Augie are also planned to be executed simply because of their presence in Hell as mortals. As a result, they team up with a demon named Deema (Mila Kunis), who is searching for Orpheus, a famous spirit who is said to have saved countless mortals who's souls were doomed to perish in Hell in time before the Devil (Bob Odenkirk) decides to sacrifice the three men.Despite the high stakes, the film feels like a constant array of tired stoner jokes written by a gang of adolescents that still find using at least two curse words in every sentence is hilarious. Admittedly, however, the film did get some laughs out of me when the small-scale, background jokes took over. Consider the scenes that involve the demons of Hell tempting the souls by having a Taco Bell/Pizza Hut counter. When one of the souls requests a pepperoni pizza, the demon informs him that they only have the Pizza Hut sign up as decoration and they are only a Taco Bell. "Welcome to Hell," the demon says whilst giggling, upon informing the poor soul. This happens a couple of other times in the film and works because of how simply outlandish and ridiculous the scene plays out, in addition to a few scenes of demons looking up the sins of the souls to see what constitutes their presence in Hell.These scenes are few and far between, however, as the bulk of the film has Remy and Augie bumbling on to random setpieces in Hell, witnessing some crass display of juvenile gags all captured in some of the most visually ugly scenery I've seen all year. With all the lame jokes occurring and the setting feeling so dim and dingy, there's simply very little positivity in this film to keep an upbeat frame of mine. Comedies set in underworlds or places of little hope obviously have difficultly meriting this constant stream of upbeat humor in contrast to the setting, but when both elements fall apart here, "Hell & Back" doesn't have a leg to stand on, frankly.Finally, there's a real cheapness to the animation here. The stop-motion animation is evidently rushed, as characters, especially when walking or moving very quickly, show a peculiar jerkiness to their motions that indicates that figures' poses were shifted too quickly, and thus, don't appear fluid. This doesn't occur frequently, but when it does, it makes the whole film seem off balance, and, much like the writing, poorly conceived.I remember hearing of "Hell & Back" earlier in the year and thought it would be something of a box office surprise; we rarely get adult animated films, and if we do, they are usually so obsessed with the idea of being vulgar and animated ("Cheech and Chong's Animated Movie" and "Jay and Silent Bob's Super Groovy Cartoon Movie" to name a few) that they wind up being throwaway projects of little merit. I felt that the talented cast of this particular film would crush that stereotype and lift it up to certain quality. Unfortunately, with the startlingly silent marketing for the film and the quiet release, "Hell & Back" will likely join other contemporaries as an experiment that failed largely because of its worst tendencies.