The Catechism Cataclysm

It is such a pleasure to be able to bring to you a movie nobody saw but should have. Remember Fido? Or even The Box? It’s like that! You go to the movie store and you’re like “what on earth is THIS thing I’m suddenly noticing, isn’t that the guy from Eastbound and Down,” and next thing you know you are 100% captivated by a bizarre no-genre film experience you almost don’t even know how to describe.

This is what it is like to watch The Catechism Cataclysm! It was written and directed by Todd Rohal, who I have never heard of and who has only directed 8 films, six of them shorts. It stars Steve Little, from Eastbound and Down perhaps most famously, and Robert Longstreet, who I had never seen before. And then various totally bizarre secondary characters are played by amazing weirdos.

Steve Little is a priest who is just kind of weird and dumb and doesn’t really understand what being a priest means. It opens with him telling a hilarious anecdote to a bible study class, about a woman who threatens to shoot some kids who are stealing her car, and they run away, and then she realizes it wasn’t her car after all. And the bible study class is like “Where does the message of Jesus Christ fit into this story, father?” and Little gets mad because they don’t understand how hilarious and awesome the story is. Then he goes into the vestry (?) and watches a youtube video of a guy singing every note in five octaves that I can’t describe or find on the internet but that made me laugh until I legitimately thought I would pee.

The basic conflict of the narrative is that Steve Little needs to learn what it means to be a priest, or else he’s clearly going to get fired or whatever they do to priests who are too shitty to be trusted with congregations. So he calls up his sister’s boyfriend from high school, who is is idol, and talks him into going on a canoe trip. The guy is like “I don’t even remember your sister, I have no idea who you are, I’m not a rock star I’m a spotlight operator for the Icecapades,” but Steve Little refuses to be disillusioned and off they go.

It turns into this bizarre Decameron-style stories-within-stories type of narrative. Robert Longstreet apparently was a writer in high school and Little nags him to tell him stories as they canoe down a river, clearly headed for some sort of Deliverance-esque nightmare. So Longstreet tells these strange, melancholy little fables. One is about a migrant laborer who gets walled up in the concrete supporting a freeway overpass, and is discovered there by another migrant laborer lady, who brings him cheetohs and milk every day and they fall in love. Each of these stories ends ambiguously, which bothers Steve Little, who wants to know if maybe the guy trapped in the concrete gets a boner so powerful it knocks down the freeway overpass and then they get married. etc.

Then they camp for the night and run into these crazy Japanese girls who are inexplicably also canoeing down the river, with an enormous mute black man they call “Jim.” They say their names are “Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer” and that they are taking “Jim” to freedom. They make weird octopus tentacle food and tell Longstreet they don’t like his stories, and then some stuff happens that would be way too spoilery to tell you. The movie has an awesome ending.

The upshot is: this is a really weird wonderful little film. I laughed so hard but was also disturbed and even sort of moved by parts of it.

I continue to be amazed by how uncomfortable it makes general audiences when films don’t fit easily into a genre. Like Southland Tales. Honestly, I think Southland Tales is one of the best movies ever made. But everyone was like “WHAT WAS IT, WAS IT FUNNY? IT WAS WEIRD I HATE IT”

I like a no-genre thing where you’re laughing and confused and scared and then crying and then laughing again and then when it’s over you’re like “?”. It’s more like life! Talk about realistic.