Sundance 2016 – Yoga Hosers

Kevin Smith has done it again.  Yoga Hosers is the second film in his True North Trilogy, following 2014’s unsettling yet brilliant Tusk, and it is a wildly inventive, insane, hilarious Canadian horror comedy that only Smith could come up with.

Yoga Hosers tells the story of Colleen Collette and Colleen McKenzie (Lily-Rose Melody Depp and Harley Quinn Smith), two social-media obsessed Sophomores who work at a convenient store.  One night, the Colleen’s get invited to a Senior party by one of their crushes Hunter (Austin Butler).  However, things don’t go as planned, and the girls end up uncovering an ancient evil that has been living beneath the earth for a long, long time.

Smith described the film as Clueless (1995) meets Gremlins (1984) set in Canada and he couldn’t be more right.  It is all that and way, way more.  If I told you the things that happened in this movie, you wouldn’t believe me.  I feel like giving anything away from Yoga Hosers would give away some of the films best surprises.  Just know that the movie has Canadian stereotypes, bratwurst, yoga, Nazi’s, Al Pacino and Sylvester Stallone impersonations, social commentary and lots of punk music sung by the two leading ladies.  Only the mastermind that is Kevin Smith can take these things and make them a cohesive and entertaining movie.

Yoga Hosers is Kevin Smith’s middle finger to his critics and critics everywhere.  Towards the end of the film, when the big monster is revealed, the villain wants it to kill all the Canadian magazine critics.  Smith doesn’t care what the critics think and never has.  With Yoga Hosers, he has made a movie where he doesn’t care what anyone thinks.  His goal was to make the movie he wanted to make and he succeeds in ridiculousness and brilliance.

The performances are hilarious and perfect.  Depp and Smith as the millennial duo nail the Canadian accents and have the charm to boot.  They also have some pretty great one-liners that they spit out like champs.  Justin Long is ridiculously hilarious as the girls’ yoga instructor.  Ralph Garman nearly steals the show as the villain who loves doing impersonations of classic action stars.  And Johnny Depp reprises his role from Tusk as Guy Lapointe, which is the best character Depp has played this decade and one of the best characters Smith has ever written.

I absolutely loved Yoga Hosers.  Where Tusk was more of a horror movie with some funny moments, Yoga Hosers is as funny as some of Smith’s classics.  The story is as weird as it is smart, the characters are rich, the violence is fun, and the film is a blast to watch.  I cannot wait for the third part of the True North Trilogy, Moose Jaws, which is Jaws (1975), but with a moose.  Classic Smith.

MY RATING – 4/4

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