"Mother Schmuckers" an interminable, unfunny endurance test

Mother Schmuckers (2022)

The very first scene of Belgian comedy “Mother Schmuckers” lets you know upfront if it’s your bag or not. It opens with grating, worthless loser brothers Issachar and Zebulon trying to force-feed each other a frying pan of human shit. These are the endearing protagonists that we are blessed with following for a grotesquely interminable and unfunny 70 minutes. When Mom walks in and understandably vomits directly into the camera to make up the film’s title, we already can’t wait for it to be over.

If you've never found yourself particularly offended by much, allow writer-directors Harpo Guit and Lenny Guit to change that. On a 24-hour odyssey to find their mother’s lost dog January-Jack, Issachar and Zebulon get into a series of misadventures while they’re being unambitious, unemployed slackers living in a Brussels apartment with their mother, a sex worker who eventually goes missing as well. Some of these sketch-like hijinks feel like on-the-fly experiments outgrossing anything in the “Jackass” show and the feature films that they almost need to be seen to believed, but maybe not. Spoiler alert: this shaggy-dog story ends with a dead dog, literally. 

Maxi Delmelle and Harpo Suit, who play the title “mother schmuckers” Issachar and Zebulon, do bring madcap energy, sure, but their willingness to do anything for shock laughs becomes an exercise in futility. Whatever heart the film has left between these two brothers is buried underneath pan-fried fecal matter, fresh corpses being raped, and pet orgies. More despicable than what almost sounds like a Dardenne brothers-John Waters collaboration, “Mother Schmuckers” is a celebration of bad taste that deserves the middle finger. What an endurance test. 

Grade: D

Dark Star Pictures is releasing "Mother Schmuckers" (70 min.) in select theaters on March 4, 2022 and on VOD on March 15, 2022.