If I had made a movie about a homicidal, telekinetic tire named Robert, I’d probably be content to coast on that for the rest of my career, but not Quentin Dupieux. The French electronic musician also known as Dr.  Mr. Oizo has been busy as hell, following up Rubber with Wrong, which stars Reno 911′s Jack Plotnick and Eastbound and Down‘s Steve Little, and hits VOD in March, and then following up Wrong with Wrong Cops, which stars Marilyn Manson and Eric Wareheim and previews its first 45 minutes at Sundance this week. I’m excited about both, and not just because it keeps someone from making more electronic music.

Wrong:

Dolph Springer (Reno 911′s Jack Plotnick) awakens one morning to find he has lost the sole love of his life – his dog, Paul. Desperate to reunite with his best friend and to set things right, Dolph embarks on a journey which spirals into the realm of the absurd. On his quest, he drastically alters the lives of several severely bizarro characters, including a promiscuous pizza delivery girl (Entourage’s Alexis Dziena), a mentally unstable, jogging-addicted neighbor, an opportunistic French-Mexican gardener, an eccentric pet detective (Steve Little of HBO’s Eastbound And Down) and most mysterious of all, an enigmatic pony-tailed guru, Master Chang (William Fichtner) who imparts his teachings to Dolph on how to metaphysically reconnect with his pet.

I feel like i have a spiritual connection to my dog’s poop, but only because I start every day picking it up with my hands. Hey, dog poop bag makers, do you think you could get working on a bag that doesn’t conduct heat? That would be great. Anyway, I never believe the quotes that tell you “THIS WILL MELT YOUR BRAIN AND SHOOT IT OUT YOUR DICK HOLE!” I mean, I’m sure it’s pleasantly odd, but I feel like people only say stuff like that because the usual idea of “weird” comedy is Seth Rogen wearing a dirtier shirt.

Wrong Cops:

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In Which I Pull a Hammy Trying to Explain the Unexplainable

There aren’t many people more polarizing than Tim and Eric. There’s a yawning chasm between the people that love their absurdist, low-fi “nightmare TV” aesthetic (confession: me), and the people who hate them, who’ve tried their best to understand it but concluded that “there’s nothing to get,” and that the people who like Tim & Eric are just stoned, wannabe-ironic exclusionary dicks who deserve ass cancer. (Virtually every bad Tim & Eric review is a subtle variation on this theme). I’ve spent probably too much time theorizing about what might cause this hard split, and here’s the best I could come up with: I think there’s a certain type people see the universe as essentially logical and ultimately explainable, that existence has some greater meaning that all humor should aspire to articulate in some small way, to bring us closer to ultimate understanding. They have no use for anything that doesn’t, which they consider a waste of their time that could be better spent figuring things out. Then there’s another type of people who’ll entertain the notion that the universe might ultimately be some cosmic joke, not solvable and with no explanation, and can revel in its utter inscrutability. Almost all of Tim & Eric’s best bits hone in on some piece of minutiae that the second type of people find hilarious, because it just is, existing at some level of absurdity beyond explanation. The same bits do nothing for the first type of people for the exact same reason. Typical reaction to a Tim & Eric bit:

TYPE 2: “They’re just running with their arms down at their sides, why is that so funny!?”

TYPE 1: “Yes, why is that funny? By which I mean it’s not.”

So, full disclosure, that’s my insanely pretentious justification for why I find things like Robert Loggia playing a CEO of Schlaaang Corp named “Tommy Schlaaang, Jr.” endlessly hilarious. I chuckle just typing that. For counterpoint, see my reverse opinion twin Roger Ebert, who writes: “The corporation is in violation of Ebert’s Law of Funny Names, which teaches us that a name intended to be funny in a movie will almost certainly not be funny. Not everybody can come up with Rufus T. Firefly or Elmer Prettywilli, and if Tommy Schlaaang is the best Tim and Eric can do, they shouldn’t have tried.”

We can agree to disagree on some level, but if you honestly think “Elmer Prettywilli” is funnier that “Tommy Schlaaang Jr,” you’re a f*cking idiot, and maybe you shouldn’t be writing comedy rules.

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It’s been a while since we heard anything about Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, which will feature performances by Zach Galifianakis, Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Jeff Goldblum, and Robert f*cking Loggia, among others, but now we know it has a distributor (Magnolia), a release date (March 20th in theaters, January 27th on VOD), and a teaser, which you can watch below. The bad news is, John C. Reilly won’t be playing Dr. Steve Brule. The good news is, he’ll be playing a character named Taquito who lives in an abandoned mall.

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