Review: The Napa Boys — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott

The Napa Boys

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Run Time; 1 hour 32 minutes

Stars: Nick Corirossi, Armen Weitzman, Sarah Ramos

Writers: Nick Corirossi, Armen Weitzman

Director: Nick Corirossi

Reviewed at the Toronto International Film Festival

There is subversive pleasure in discovering a movie that absolutely, positively does not care whether or not you get it, nor understand it, nor feel you even occupy the same universe. Such films plunge ahead, like icebergs in a sea of lava, doubling down on their twisted vision with each passing second, plowing forward with single-minded, exponential urgency.

I’m not sure I can recommend The Napa Boys for anyone beyond an audience segment more slender than a grapevine tendril. Yet I feel compelled to write about it. Heed my words of warning and befuddled admiration and make your own decision when the film arrives at an independent theater near you.

The setup for The Napa Boys is not just high concept; its concept hovers at an altitude where oxygen does not exist and, quite possibly, solar flares lick at your feet: The film’s opening credits present the title The Napa Boys 4: The Sommelier’s Amulet—in other words, this is supposedly the fourth installment in an ongoing series of films about The Napa Boys, four or five guys whose previous adventures all unfolded in the world of high-stakes wine making (under, it seems, low-rent budgets that have steadily diminished over the years).

The conceit is this: There are no Napa Boys prequels. But we’re asked to pretend we remember them.

The script by cowriter/director/costar Nick Corirossi (YouTube’s Unsordid) frequently implies we should know these guys’ backstories and comprehend their interpersonal relationships, but the effect is one of parachuting into the grossest moments of the American Pie series or the endless character cameos in Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, without any context whatsoever. So when one character (Jamar Malachi Neighbors) is repeatedly referred to only as “Stifler’s Brother,” we must presume the original Stifler was once played by another actor who has since left the franchise, and so is a replacement character, Stifler’s brother, was introduced (Stifler, I should note, is the name of a primary character in the American Pie movies – so maybe we’re supposed to imagine some Hollywood lawsuit in which the producers of American Pie sued the Napa Boys filmmakers for stealing their  character’s name, and so the Napa Boys people got around it by specifying that this guy is not Stifler, but instead Stifler’s brother. Or maybe I’m overthinking this). When a preening villain named Squirm (Inglorious Basterds’ Paul Rust) flounces onto the screen, it is clear from the Napa Boys’ reaction that he is a perennial nemesis.  Even the names of the two main Napa Boys, Miles Jr. and Jack Jr. (co-writers Armen Weitzman and Corirossi) imply these guys were not around for the original Napa Boys installment, but were written in as offspring replacements for the long-gone Napa Boys O.G.s.

Get it? Confused yet? I suspect that’s all part of the devilish shell game behind Napa Boys.

The genius in Napa Boys is the in-your-face ways in which the film mocks and memorializes the B-picture ethos: Cutaways to avoid expensive action moments; plentiful re-use of footage; repeating over and over “Here we are in Napa!” in the hope audiences will ignore the fact that we are, instead, filming on some failed and/or burnt-out vineyard in Simi Valley. The promised “reveal” of a mythical character called The Sommelier—who has clearly been reverently referenced numerous times in the first three installments—comes with the clear implication that he will be played by a major-name star. It turns out to be D.J. Qualls, who was featured in the similarly themed Road Trip (2000), which likewise spawned multiple, incrementally more poorly received sequels (as an added bonus, it’s clear that Qualls’ scene was filmed in the absence of any of the other actors).

To be fair to the fictional filmmakers, there is in the later scenes one delightfully incongruous cameo by a world-famous pair who have starred in a legitimately classic series of sequels. But even their presence cements The Napa Boys as a celebration of pitch-perfect cinematic failure, a must-see for all aficionados of bad movies.

You have been warned.