The Last Lovecraft

This movie was appropriately preceded by this:



I don't think I need to tell you how good that is.




The feature film; The Last Lovecraft seems at times really good, and then other times kind of cheap or poorly considered. Imagine that your lead is an irritable Toby McGuire with a lazy eye. Yeah he's... a little strange to watch. He and his comic-obssessed roommate work together at the SQRLY gift company, which does something... and they have the company's squirrelly mascot drawn on their car. (Company car?)

The titular last Lovecraft and his buddy are recruited in quite short order to secure an artifact sought by the Buffy the Vampire Slayer-esque 'Starspawn' to revive his master Cthulu. He is assisted by men in visibly plastic fish suits who are being called the Deep Ones. It's not quite Lovercraftian horror... or even a big costume budget. I guess they've only got so much budget, but they should have reconsidered what they were showing, even for a comedy.

The good guys are joined by a bearded geek they used to know in high school who suggests they find a Captain Olaf who supposedly survived an encounter with the Deep Ones. So they take the lead's Prius out into the desert which leads to the best scene in the movie. Lazy eye goes into a motel to look for a vending machine where he receives a reception from the heavyset owner that bounces between angry and aggressively amorous. As lazy eye flees from the motel, the owner tells him to watch out for weirdos out in the desert. The awesome continues into the next scene as the party eventually stops their car for a rest. Predictably, they oversleep and get a nasty surprise when they awake.

Eventually, they meet up with Captain Olaf who shares with some some terrifying tales, (Olaf: "You ever been fish-raped?") and decide to make a stand out in the desert against Cthulu's minions. The climactic scenes weren't bad, save the final one which seemed both to have poor effects and be impossible. (Shooting dynamite and then not-really-quickly getting behind a rock? Ugh)

Though middling in a lot of ways, I think when this was trying to be funny it was pretty solid. There were some elements which either fell flat, or undermined the premise, and there were some animated scenes which while done well themselves, weren't really helping the movie any. The plot is kinda campy, but doesn't really offer anything up with the premise. The crew said after the film that they didn't want to target the Lovecraftian mythos and stories, but then all we're left with is some funny characters, (Especially the geek and everybody towards the second half) and a crummy adventure. It could have been better. Some parts of this could have made for a better movie if they could have continued in the same vein.