It’s
like Weekend at Bernie’s, but with
more self-help and dismemberment. An earnest sad sack is determined to make a
good impression house-sitting for a success guru, but the parade of unwelcome visitors
threatens to sabotage his ambitions. The dead bodies probably will not help
either in writer-director Will Prescott’s Feeding
Mr. Baldwin (trailer
here), which
launches today on VOD.
Lance
Bryant wrote the book on success and Drew Delaney read every word. If the
house-sitting goes well, he might have a chance to join “Team Lance” in a more
permanent capacity. How hard can that be? After all, his most demanding duty should be
feeding Bryant’s bulldog, Mr. Baldwin. Then a mysterious crate arrives, which
Mr. Baldwin starts chewing on, revealing a dead body inside.
In
a state of panic, Delaney tries to dispose of the corpse, finding further
misadventures in the process. Suddenly, all sorts of shady characters start
dropping by, assuming Delaney is Bryant. His only potential ally is Kamal, an
estranged school chum who happens to come calling for his door-to-door knife
salesmen gig. (Foreshowing? Maybe so.)
At
least Mr. Baldwin is low maintenance. In fact, Prescott largely squanders the
cinematic possibilities of a very chill bulldog. Instead, he tries to mine
comedy from some distinctly unfunny subjects, especially human trafficking. There
are also a lot of gory gags that we have essentially seen before. Frankly, the
only material that consistently lands involves Bryant’s success gospel,
delivered with appropriately hammy conviction by Christopher B. Duncan.
The
rest of Prescott’s cast of comedy troupe veterans can turn a snappy bit of
dialogue, but they are hamstrung by the tonal inconsistencies. For some reason,
Feeding is determined to find ways to
be sentimental, despite the bloody bedlam. Dalton Leeb plugs away as the
plugger Delaney, but Anil Margsahayam often looks bored to be there as Kamal,
the reluctant accomplice.
