The film is history across the pond, but having just seen Jared Hess’s “Gentlemen Broncos” in the Generation strand of the Berlinale, I feel obliged to briefly counter the thoroughly undeserved critical and commercial kicking the film received back in fall 2009.
Because I’m astonished to find Hess’s creatively chaotic stew of literature, movies-within-movies and vintage power balladry the most sweet-natured and most consistently hilarious comedy of last year.
I was never a “Napoleon Dynamite” disciple. And in light of reviews even harsher than those for the dire “Nacho Libre,” it’s fair to say I wasn’t looking forward to Hess’s latest. Indeed, I wasn’t planning on seeing at all; I only ducked in to seek refuge from the embarrassing Competition entry I’d walked out of next door. (More on that later.)