"substantial" | High on the Hog
“Substantial”
“The gamy crime comedy “High on the Hog” rips off two kinds of “grindhouse” — the actual low-budget exploitation pictures of yore, and Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s stylishly ironic 2007 homage. In either case, this movie’s a shoddy copy of something that was pretty tawdry to begin with.
B-movie legend Sid Haig stars as Big Daddy, an affable pig-farmer who has a lucrative side business growing marijuana. Surrounded by pretty women who dote on him, Big Daddy lives an idyllic life, until government agents and a hired killer start closing in.
Besides Haig, “High on the Hog” features substantial roles for trash-cinema vets Joe Estevez and Robert Z’Dar. And unlike the more timid modern genre films, this one’s true to its sleazy roots. It’s violent, it’s laced with drug humor, and it’s so committed to gratuitous nudity that even the closing credits include topless dancers.
But while director Tony Wash and writer-producer Kevin Lockhart’s intentions are honorable (or, at least, appropriately dishonorable), their movie’s a chore to watch. Scenes run on interminably long, the story goes nowhere, the actors play everything too broadly … even the action scenes are flat and slow.”