I had to rearrange movie week this week, as I was busy with work stuff, but I'll be honest with you, up until about 5 minutes ago I didn't really know what I wanted to watch anyway. I've struggled a bit to focus on things the past week or so, owing to current events. I visited Kyiv and Chornobyl in 2019, something I'd wanted to do for years and Kyiv was a great city, everybody there (mostly) couldn't do enough to accommodate us. So I wasn't really feeling up to enduring something trash and garbage this week, maybe next week, I needed something to distract me, but something I also might find enjoyable, and after scrolling through my Prime Watchlist I've settled on Spaghettiman, a... well I don't even know to be honest. Comedy? Action Comedy? About a man who is blessed with the power of spaghetti... a la Spiderman style? It's been in my Watchlist for a while... for... obvious reasons... so I figure if anything can distract me it's a completely bonkers film with a ridiculous premise right?
After losing his job, completely useless but incredibly beardy man Clark Kant (Benjamin Crutcher) returns home to a microwaved spaghetti takeout meal and wakes up 4 days later to discover he can piss spaghetti... how inconvenient... but after foiling a street robber, literally by accident, Clark discovers he can shoot spaghetti from his hands! After going home to his room-mate and training Police Officer Dale (Winston Carter) who just so happens to also be a major comic book nerd, Clark is inspired to use his new found pasta powers for good... providing of course he gets paid for it afterwards! After saving a guy from a mugging he helps himself to the contents of his wallet; $42 and proceeds to sniff out opportunities around the city, stopping another mugging, stopping a car thief, and... 'helping' a guy in a wheelchair up some stairs... Adopting the moniker Spaghettiman Clark advertises his services anonymously on Craigslist, where an opportunity puckers his interest; helping Stephanie (Jana Jude Brown) get her boyfriend, Gary (Joe Fria) back from drug dealers! Crashing the joint Clark realises that not only can he shoot spaghetti, but he is literally made of spaghetti now... when he gets shot and stabbed and beaten up only to realise he isn't hurt at all. Overcoming some drug dealers with the power of pasta and returning Gary to his fiancée, Clark becomes emboldened and continues to answer the calls for justice in return for financial recompense! Attracting the attention of a independent journalist, Anthony Banner (Brand Rackley), Clark and Anthony come to a business arrangement that Clark will help Anthony get better footage of Spaghettiman in return for a split of the profits. Despite the fact Anthony's wife is less than pleased with the arrangement and begs for him not to get himself killed, he goes along with it anyway as he needs the money. Meanwhile, as Dale discovers he has yet again failed in his application to become a Police Officer and becomes increasingly disenfranchised with the way Clark is acting; helping people but only for the money, he stumbles upon a mugging and invites the mugger, Keto (Joe LoCicero... dude those cheekbones!) to take up an opportunity to "get rid of the spaghettiman". After interviewing potential candidates to take down Spaghettiman, Dale is frustrated with his options and demands Keto to do better... The following morning, after Anthony alerts Clark that there might be a copy-cat Spagettiman, Clark responds to offer of a big pay cheque only to be ambushed in a set-up by Keto that frames him for murder. As Clark tells Anthony the whole story on his way home, Dale proceeds to trash their apartment and... attempt... to beat himself up. Arriving back to find the place wrecked, Clark blames Anthony for raising his profile and the pair fall out and as Dale asks Clark to go get the people that did it, Clark wimps out and says he's done. Much to the chagrin of Dale. After spending the next few days doing nothing but looking after Dale and not rising to the provocations that he should "get back out there and find who did this," Clark forces Dale to resort to 'Plan B'. Answering a phone call from Anthony, Clark rushes round to discover somebody has abducted Anthony's wife. Suspecting it may have something to do with Dale, as Dale is the only one who knows they work together, Clark gives him a call and Dale confirms as much, asking Keto to "take care" of her. Arriving at... wherever the hell they are holding Anthony's wife, some kind of gym... Spaghettiman shows up to a room full of goons, the uh, interviewees from earlier, and after a short and purposely unimpressive fight scene takes them all out, leaving only Keto standing. As Keto and Spaghettiman fight, Anthony finds his way in to the back to rescue his wife, Katie (Leigh Wulff) but is stopped by Dale who says they all need to see if "Clark will achieve his destiny". Meanwhile Spaghettiman / Clark is getting completely pounded by Keto who is just that little too quick and little too strong, As Clark literally gets pounded into a pile of Spaghetti, Dale rushes in to make the save and as they argue over whether or not they wanted Spaghettiman killed, Spaghettiman reanimates, complete with fancy new bag mask now, and takes Keto out with a accurately placed noodle. Chasing after Dale to the top of the buildings roof, Dale makes Clark realise that he took out the henchmen, saved the damsel in distress and stopped the bad guys, and he did it all for free. Much to Clark's despair, but after hitching a ride home with Anthony he comes to realise that having people 'in his debt' is much more rewarding than actually getting paid!
Ok so this was just completely bonkers. But at the same time it was a clever, sarcastic poke at superhero movies and very much a 'anti-hero' kind of movie. It got a little bit gritty at times, but was mostly just tongue in cheek. Imagine Kickass but not quite as dark. It was obviously low budget, and very much a dyed-in-the-wool B-Movie but apparently they used real spaghetti so y'know, gotta credit them for that! I genuinely enjoyed this though. It was silly, it was sarcastic, it was self aware, it was a total spoof, and it was if not nothing else, curious. Like watching a tower collapse. The anticipation is the entertaining part as you watch on almost in disbelief at what's unfolding in front of you.
For what it's worth though, despite being low budget the movie was produced really competently. It did that whole freestyle camerawork alot that I have criticised in past movies, but here it just kinda worked. Everything felt lo-fi, cultist, and indie, so it kinda fitted the aesthetic. When they needed to do impressive establishing shots or moments of cinematography they were able to pull it off, and there were moments that adopted a really grungey colour palette to give it that budget comic book feel. It had B-Movie camerawork written through it like a stick of rock but they still found moments to be really impressive and really professional about it when it counted most.
Also, something of a rarity in B-Movies, but the acting here was all pretty much really decent. Benjamin Crutcher was great as the apathetic lead and the complete opposite of everything you would design when putting together a titular superhero lead male, but that was exactly the point, it flies in the face of the stereotypical and it and he worked real well. Everybody else as well was alright, nobody really let the side down here.
The storyline as well, developed and unfolded pretty well, the first 45 odd minutes of the film did start to feel a little bit like they were padding things out, and it suffered from a kind of origin story syndrome that these kind of movies all have as they set up and establish the character, but they did enough to pull it back in the second 45, so much so that it can be forgiven. And the whole anti-superhero kind of rhetoric that was building up was fully fleshed out as Spaghettiman gets destroyed in the fight scene and dies, rather than the cliché route where he would just rush in and save the day as per usual.
The above positives accounted for, there was the unquestionable, unshakeable feeling throughout the entire movie that it was just not quite living up to it's full potential. It was silly and ridiculous, but not overly so and that is kind of a positive really because the humour was subtle, and sarcastic and if it had been any more on the nose it wouldn't have been funny, but it was bleak which was maybe the point, but I also felt left wanting. More character development, more character insight would have been nicer. I think you could have fleshed parts out a little bit more and added another, say, 20 odd minutes to the movie and it would have taken it up a notch. Creativity wise and storyline wise it was good. But it was just good. It was a silly idea; a superhero made of pasta who is the antithesis of everything a superhero should be, but with the potential to be explored and it sometimes felt like it was lacking in exploration.
Although, ultimately, I enjoyed this. And it was a very welcome distraction. In terms of great B-Movies I've covered on this blog; Assassinaut, Phoenix Project, Bad Hair, Killer Sofa it doesn't quite rank alongside though but it's certainly decent enough to be talked about in the same conversation. I like superhero movies, but I also like sarcasm. And I liked how the movie wasn't afraid to poke fun at all the superhero clichés and how they weren't afraid to apply a sobering degree of realism to things. I'd absolutely be up for a Spaghettiman 2 but only if they follow the same formula; be brutally honest, be sarcastic, carry on playing up the ridiculousness of superhero clichés and most importantly; have a real original storyline to play out amongst all of that. Definitely worth a watch if you are into indie, cult cinema. 3 out of 5.
