Hit and Run

While the hypothesis of converging a series of passionless "shout outs” and gauche recreations of popularized cinematic scenarios and techniques may seem wise, or perhaps "neat,” to a layman, the actuality of said supposition in Hit and Run is far from anything resembling either. In fact, the experience of watching someone duplicate famous scenes from the works of Aronofsky, Raimi and more amusingly, Alfred Hitchcock with little to no technical aptitude or storytelling panache is slightly discomforting, confusing and more importantly, hilarious, in a MST3K kind of way. These vignettes exist within a story about Mary (Laura Breckenridge), a young woman who inadvertently hits a bipolar kindergarten teacher (Kevin Corrigan) while driving home drunk from a spring break kegger (Go Panthers!). Unaware that this gentleman was lodged in her front bumper, she is understandably distraught when she discovers his bloody body in her garage. Rather than calling an ambulance, or seeking assistance of any kind, Mary decides to bash his head in with a golf club and bury him in the woods, utilizing a Frisbee as a makeshift shovel. In between picking up her grandmother’s parrots from the airport and vomiting every 15 minutes, our plucky young protagonist decides to confess her sins to a young man who wears a wife-beater with no apparent sense of irony (Christopher Shand), which of course, puts his life in danger. The lessons learned here are mainly that bipolar disorder apparently causes people to grow big, plastic yellow werewolf teeth and teleport magically at opportune moments, having a human speak in "parrot voice” in an ADR suite is rarely a good idea and that toilet cams are only appropriate in German porn. At least the random use of "glory hole” vision to represent a simple eye-line match, along with the decision to employ "the wipe” — a technique popular in ’60s television — midway through the film for no apparent reason keep unintentional humour at a welcome high. Sadly, the DVD includes no special features whatsoever, which is really a shame, as a director’s commentary, or "making of,” with talk of "characters,” would have been fantastic.