Bigfoot’s Wild Weekend (2012)

Directed by Jeff Murray

Viewed on Amazon Prime

A thought I’ve been having more and more as I’ve been watching bad Bigfoot movie after bad Bigfoot movie is, why do people make movies like this? There are a lot of examples of ‘like this,’ but today I’m going to focus on a very specific subgenre of film that has bizarrely survived the proliferation of the internet, sex comedies. I understand why these kinds of movies used to be made, in the 70s and 80s, and even through the 90s a bit, when people did not have easy access to pornography of their choosing. You would have to either risk human contact and buy a porno mag from a store or go to a strip club to see topless ladies. There was a clear market for films that had gratuitous nudity or sexual situations, as you couldn’t really get that another way at the time. But now, with the internet, anyone can look at as many naked pictures and racy videos of whomever they want, whenever they want. So how do movies that exist just to showcase young women taking their tops off still exist? I ask this only because Bigfoot’s Wild Weekend is one of these movies, and that question is more interesting to me than anything else that happens during the movie.

Bigfoot’s Wild Weekend is about Bigfoot having a…well, you can probably figure that part out. We follow Bigfoot occasionally as he spies on topless ladies splashing around in streams, as he swipes beers from fishermen and campsites, and as he swipes panties to take back to his lair. This very mature subject matter is padded to feature length by extended sequences involving multitudes of characters who show up, establish who they are and what their character trait is, who then see Bigfoot and run off to leave the movie entirely. Because of this it is almost impossible to summarize the movie without just listing every scene, but I’ll do my best to boil it down. A cub reporter from a sleazy tabloid goes to a location ripe with Bigfoot sightings and then looks for a little bit before hooking up with a reporter lady, who actually works for a real news source, who he joins forces with to accomplish nothing. This thin plot is interrupted by a cavalcade of boring nobodies who shamble onscreen to try and force some humor out before they shamble offscreen so the next scene can start.

Now that the plot is out of the way, I have to go back to the question of why this movie exists. Who is this movie for? I understand that I’m not always the target audience for a movie, and there is nothing wrong with that, but usually I can figure out why someone might want to watch a movie even if I don’t want to. I think I have some idea of who would want to watch this movie. Judging by the cover and the title, it is implied that Bigfoot is partying WITH the sexy naked ladies during the course of his wild weekend, and I could see some comedy coming from that. Like, for example, if the movie was set during a costume party and there’s this huge crowd of people partying at a lakehouse or something by the woods, and then Bigfoot shows up and he gets invited inside because they think he’s just wearing a really good costume. And then Bigfoot spends the weekend getting high and playing beer pong and ogling ladies. That, I could see wringing a few laughs out of, but that isn’t what we have here.

There isn’t a strong central narrative here, so there’s really no framework to hang the jokes on. Most of the jokes boil down to really lame innuendos, a redneck father being ashamed of his redneck son by saying his catchphrase, “I cannot believe you came out of my loins.” Over and over, and people having their beer/food/underwear burgled by Bigfoot as he wanders around the forest. There is one other running joke that these filmmakers thought was hilarious, and that is the fact that every Bigfoot/Yeti that we learn of is revealed to be a sexual predator with a predilection for rape. Now you might be saying, wait a second, the idea of Bigfoot being a rapist doesn’t sound very funny, in fact it sounds like something a juvenile internet edgelord came up with. That’s a sensible thing to think, because you would be completely correct to think this.

I’m not going to get into the debate as to if rape jokes can ever be funny, that’s an entirely different topic, what I am specifically talking about here is that these ‘jokes’ are not jokes. There is no punchline except, isn’t it funny that Bigfoots enjoy forcing themselves on others? And these Bigfoots aren’t picky, they’ll rape hillbillies, Bigfoot enthusiasts, and ladies who think Bigfoot is just their boyfriend wrapped in a big furry blanket. I think even the creators knew how uncomfortable this joke was, to some extent, because while the men get violently raped, which is hilarious because raping men is hysterical, they pulled back ever so slightly so that the lady was raped by deception and not by brutal force, which even they knew was going too far. It doesn’t make the scene less awful though. Bigfoot is still a rapist.

There honestly isn’t even much more to say about Bigfoot’s Wild Weekend. Bad comedies are always kind of tough to talk about and this one is no exception, all of my criticisms are basically ‘it wasn’t funny,’ so there’s only so much more I can even talk about. The acting is pretty bad, which should not shock anyone, but even worse than that was how it seemed like all the takes used were the worst ones. People are regularly stuttering, tripping over lines, remembering mid-sentence what they were supposed to say, and it is mildly distracting. I’m 100% certain this wasn’t recorded on film, so why not just get a few more takes until people can remember their lines?

I’m just beating a dead horse at this point. Bottom line is that Bigfoot’s Wild Weekend is as bad as you would think it is and more. It isn’t funny, has no plot, and the characters are nonexistent. The only positives I can think of are that the Bigfoot costume is pretty decent and I laughed once when someone kneed Bigfoot in the groin.