Cemetery Man

How does one review a movie so deliberately non-conformist as Cemetery Man? A movie that has only two main characters, but somehow has half a dozen subplots, all involving them, but no main plot or even a singular through-line beyond "events revolve around the cemetery"? How does one try to explain a movie that changes tones from erotic to sweet to darkly comedic to bleak to existential? I'm not sure. It is almost useless to discuss plot or character motivations or other nitty-gritty details that conventional movies live for, when Cemetery Man was made with unmistakable disregard for those conventions. It is the ultimate repudiation of Trey Parker and Matt Stone's writing philosophy of "... and then" being poor writing, because Cemetery Man lives and dies (no pun intended) by "... and then" writing. It is fascinating. It is confounding. It is entertaining. But it will be infuriating to some. Cemetery Man will not appeal to those who want their movies to have structure and order and logic. I mean, a big point of the movie is how, at this cemetery, some (but not all) of the dead rise up seven days after their internment, and when that time restraint stops applying, the protagonist's response is a non-plussed "that's sooner than usual". Zombies consume flesh and act like, well, zombies, until some can talk, and remember things from their lives, and can act human. How does any of this happen? Why do the dead even come back? Don't ask, you're not getting answers. This is a world where things happen. Cause and effect have a passing familiarity with one another, but don't always choose to acknowledge one another here. The movie could not care less about its own rules, or the semblance of maintaining rules at all, and if you can't do that, just check out. So how do I review this? The answer I've landed on is that I don't. I do what I've done already; I explain that Cemetery Man is a movie that has the chaotic, unburdened-by-reality rough edges of pre-Lord Of The Rings Peter Jackson (this would make a fantastic double-bill with a movie like Braindead). It presents a world in which things happen and you, the viewer, either choose to accept it or bail out at the soonest possible time, because it isn't going to change a damned thing for your convenience. It's not always satisfying, but it is always intriguing, and it never stops being true to itself.