Hey kids, the flashback sequences in this movie actually look and feel like the ‘80s, in the way that Stranger Things and It most definitely don’t. That irrelevancy aside, here’s the film most determined this year to enrage Whistler audiences, resurrected from a 30-year-old Jules Feiffer screenplay (updated by the still active writer/cartoonist), and drenched to the bone in the vintage misogyny of another era. 

Two old college friends reunite after three decades, but only because pig’s pig Huey (David Koechner) needs a place to crash after going on the lam from his own dysfunctional family. These days, however, Bernard (Community's Jim Rash) is better equipped to match his friend’s pathological sexual competitiveness, and so the middle-aged games begin—with Bernard including Huey’s 20-something daughter Zelda (Mae Whitman) among his not-totally heartless conquests.

Laceratingly honest, irredeemably sexist, but a brisk and enjoyable watch all the same—the vanity deficient Koechner really gets more impressive with each film—Bernard and Huey deserves to exist if only to bug the insufferably Stalinist “woke” among us who might not want an inside critique of toxic masculinity with this much wry compassion attached. Plus it’s nice to see Nancy Travis (So I Married an Axe Murderer) back on the big screen.

Georgia Straight, November 2017