MAD HEIDI

More often than not, I found myself struggling to force laughter while watching “Mad Heidi,” a lazy, one-note, crowd funded film from co-directors Johannes Hartmann and Sandro Klopfstein. Billed as a Swissploitation action/horror comedy, I wanted so badly for this movie to be funny, but it just isn’t. Here’s a case where the premise is far better than the finished product, which turns out to be an unfortunate example of what happens when a movie is simply trying too hard to be clever (and fails).

Set in a dystopian Switzerland, Heidi (Alice Lucy) and her grandfather live a simple life in the Alps. Their beautiful country has fallen under the fascist rule of an evil cheese tyrant, Our Very Swiss Leader (Casper Van Dien), a ruthless dictator who wants to rule the world through dairy domination. When Heidi’s goat-herding boyfriend (Kel Matsena) is brutally murdered by the government for distributing illegal cheese, she sets out on a revenge tour to find vengeance for her lover. Along the way, she’ll have to fight against super soldiers, prison inmates, ninja nuns, deathly henchmen, and face other outlandish obstacles as she fights to restore freedom to her country.

It sounds like a hilarious premise for a midnight movie, and it is. The problem is that this action-adventure story is far too weird, campy, and dumb — and not in a good way. There’s not enough material for a feature length movie (the main concept pitch was probably something like “hey, let’s see all the crazy things we can do with cheese, like torturing people with fondue”), which makes the whole thing reek of desperation. There are lame homages to everything from Tarantino films to exploitation flicks from the 70s and 80s, and none of it works. There are shades of “Sisu” and “Kill Bill,” but with dreadfully unfunny running cheese jokes.

The sense of humor is lacking, and I found very little funny about this film. It’s not goofy enough nor quick-witted enough to stand out, and the quartet of writers (Klopfstein and Hartmann, along with Gregory D. Widmer and Trent Haaga) crafted a screenplay that feels disjointed. The writing and dialogue is, and I won’t mince words because there’s no point in doing so, absolutely dreadful.

The retro look and feel of the film finds mild success, as do the practical gore effects. It’s bloody and violent with creative kills, but audiences are forced to sit through a painfully slow and plodding first half before the good stuff (aka the revenge-fueled ass kicking) starts. This is a movie you’ll never want to watch again, which means it has little chance of ever becoming the cult classic is so desperately wants to be.

Movies need to start with a solid foundation and go from there, but “Mad Heidi” seems to work backwards by building its thin story around a final punchline. As a result, this second-rate film feels like nothing more than an unfunny, fatigued gimmick.