BAD JOHNSON (2014)

Genre: Comedy
Director: Huck Botko
Cast: Cam Gigandet, Nick Thune, Jamie Chung, Katherine Cunningham
RunTime: 1 hr 28 mins
Rating: M18 (Sexual References and Sexual Scenes)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 11 June 2014

Synopsis: With women practically throwing themselves at him, Rich (Cam Gigandet) can’t control himself. But he continually blames his penis, which seems to have a mind of its own. After ruining yet another promising relationship with Jamie (Jamie Chung) Rich has finally had enough and wishes his penis would just leave him alone. The next morning, Rich wakes up to find his wish has come true and his johnson is no longer on his body. Even worse, Rich is shocked to discover that his penis has taken human form. Selfish, oversexed and irresponsible, his penis is now on the loose with no desire to return. Pitted against his alter ego, Rich must figure out how to reign in his penis, both literally and figuratively, in order to finally learn what separates the men from their boys.

Movie Review:

‘Bad Johnson’ is about a serial womaniser named Rich Johnson (Cam Gigandet) whose addiction to sex jeopardises any chance that he has of a proper relationship with a woman, until he wakes up one day to discover that his appendage has somehow transmogrified into an slacker dude (Nick Thune). If that opening line has got you (err…) hooked, then you might just be the audience that writer Jeff Tetreault and director Huck Botko had in mind with their high-concept sex farce.

Truth be told, there is potentially a lot of promise in this scenario concocted by Tetreault, which gives new meaning to the excuse by many a horn dog that their penis has a “mind of its own”.  Unfortunately for Rich, his penis’ mind is but preoccupied with its own pleasure, so after collect-calling Rich to pick it up, the bearded slacker hires an escort service, visits strip clubs, smokes weed, and chalks up astronomical credit card bills, leaving Rich exasperated like a parent who has lost control of his or her teenage kid.  

We’re not too convinced that Rich’s horn doggery had everything to do with his penis, and nothing to do with his own sexual desires, but hey if you follow Tetreault’s drift, Rich is the guy we’re supposed to empathise with and his penis the douchebag we’re supposed to despise. To emphasise that, Rich gets to fall in love for real with one of his clients Lindsay (Katherine Cunningham) without the distraction of his anatomical troublemaker, which sets in motion an eventual showdown between Rich and his libido.

It might sound inspired on paper to have a Don Juan confront his own anatomy in human form, but that premise doesn’t play out just as brilliantly no thanks to rather pedestrian execution by both Tetreault and Botko. For a character named Rich, our protagonist is thuddingly shallow – basically, horny when he has a cock and wheedling without one. Rich’s penis turns out to be no more than an obnoxious dick (yes, pun intended) who is boorish, offensive and a plain bully. There is no nuance in their relationship, which remains monotonously antagonistic from start to finish and that simply revolves around who is slave to the other.

As you probably can guess, Tetreault stuffs his script with an endless stream of penis jokes, some of which are supposed to be funny just because they happen in a very literal sense to Rich. Unfortunately, it does get stale very quickly, and there is nothing a trite rom-com finish can do to make it any less limp. The same goes for Botko, who takes an all-too literal reading to Tetreault’s script, and ends up with a film that looks as dull as it probably read on the page. Even the brief sight of Rich’s genital area conspicuously devoid of his penis looks exactly like how you would expect it to, i.e. a Ken Doll.

Like we said at the start, there is ripe promise here for something sharp and funny, but neither Tetreault nor Botko seem to have the ‘balls’ to bring it to fruition. Former ‘Twilight’ heartthrob Cam Gigandet makes the best of an underwritten role, and Thune is sufficiently repugnant, but it isn’t quite enough to sustain a feature-length movie. As it is, we might have chuckled harder if it were a ‘Saturday Night Live’ episode or one part of a larger sketch film, because ‘Bad Johnson’ simply can’t quite keep its comedy hard-on long enough to deliver a satisfactory payoff. You’ll be intrigued all right, but you’ll probably be left disappointed.

Movie Rating:

(A one-note joke that can't quite keep up its mojo, this sex farce fizzles flaccid too quickly)

Review by Gabriel Chong