Sweet Insanity (2006)

“Sweet Insanity” is a great example of a movie that's so bad it's good. It's too funny to be scary, but too serious to be considered a “comedy film.” Completely lacking self-awareness, “Sweet Insanity” is just a mess. A big, beautiful, hilarious mess. I have absolutely no idea what director/writer Daniel Hess was trying to do with this movie. “Sweet Insanity” has a fair amount of silly characters, bad shots and all the standard B-movie fare. However, the majority of the movie's unintentional humor actually comes from the downright psychotic dialogue.

"He was about to make a move, then
he puked on my shoes." "Oh my god,
what shoes?" "I can't believe you
just asked me that."

After the movie opens with a trippy dream sequence, we cut to the next morning and are introduced to the main girl, Stacey (Rebekah Hoyle). She's visited by one of her fellow senior friends Rachel and, thus, we have the first conversation of the movie. As Stacey converses with Rachel, Rachel asks if she hooked up with her crush Ty over the weekend. Stacey proceeds to inform her: “I think he was about to [make a move]... and then he puked on my shoes.” In complete defiance of social reality, Rachel replies with “Oh my god! What shoes?”

“Sweet Insanity” is supersaturated with moments like these. Even Stacey responds with “I can't believe you just asked me that.” As if this scene weren't enough of a mindfuck, Stacey's girlfriends then come to pick her up for school. Suddenly, the quiet scene is interrupted by blaring loud pop-rock music that drowns out the final snippets of dialogue.

Once at school, Stacey runs into the new kid, Christina (Mackenzie Firgens). Christina is a 'goth.' Stacey warms up to Christina very quickly, and after school they leave together chatting. I'm honestly surprised that the movie didn't just portray her like the goth kids from “South Park.” Instead, Christina turns out to be one of the movie's deeper characters. She comes from a dysfunctional family and later forms a romantic relationship with Stacey.

In addition to Stacey and her friends, we're introduced to her next door neighbor, an ex-cop named Mr. Sutherland (David Fine). Rumors abound about his having killed a kid while drunk on duty. That sounds promising, right?

After all the character introductions, it's revealed that Stacey's parents are going away for the weekend. Despite her intentions, the word gets out immediately and she becomes the impromptu host of a typical high school house party. Predictably, things go badly. The party-goers decide to bother Mr. Sutherland; consequently, they are hunted down by the psychotic ex-cop as well as an unforeseen cast of other antagonists.

For those of you who were here for “Spring Break Month,” you may be thinking: “Oh, great. Drew's gonna spend the entire review complaining about the resultant pointless scenes.” Amazingly, “Sweet Insanity”'s obnoxious dialogue provides enough charm to pull anybody through the protracted party scenes. The oddball direction also pumps these scenes full of charm and color. (One particular scene where shy-guy Ty gets into a fight with popular kid Joey nearly plays out like the Mark and Johnny party scene from “The Room.”)

This is a good time to take a look at the aforementioned 'popular kid,' Joey (Chris Ritti). At his core, Joey is little more than a stereotypical dirtbag. However, “Sweet Insanity's” writing over-amplifies his douchebaggery. It also adds a lot to his charm. It's immensely entertaining to watch Joey converse with his buddies about such topics as: “that one time he took Ecstasy,” that “psycho stalker they have on their hands,” and his self-awareness of his stupidity.

The fun doesn't even stop there. In “Sweet Insanity,” Joey speaks the single most bizarre line in my entire VHS/DVD collection. In fact, it's the single most bizarre line I have ever heard any character speak in any movie I have ever seen. Joey is sitting in an English class as the teacher drones on about how a literary character is going through a subconscious struggle. When he asks the class for input, Joey immediately raises his hand. He proceeds to state, and I quote:

"Okay, well, I got a question. Um... this subconscious thing is like really taking over, you know? Like... you know? Uh... subconsciousness is coming in for the consciousness, right? And then, and then the consciousness is going in for the subconsciousness and there's... he's subbing. Do you know what I mean? Okay, just look. If I'm in the game and I'm playing the game, right? But then I go out, I'm no longer playing, here comes the sub, someone's subbing in for me. Listen, okay? If I'm... um... the subconsciousness and the consciousness comes BACK in for the subconsciousness, I'M saying that a sub... It's entirely possible that a sub will sub for a sub. That's... does that make sense?"

To this day, Zeke & I will make “subbing for a sub” references. But in all seriousness, my response to this line of dialogue is: “Why?” What would possess Chris Ritti to speak this line? (It was more than likely ad-libbed.) And if it was actually in the screenplay, what would possess Adam Weis to write this line? Like any film, there must have been at least 50 people working – did nobody object to this scene? Why didn't one of the editors simply tell Dan and Adam, “You have to cut this scene out. This is ridiculous!”? This line is so perfectly bizarre that it should be considered a piece of surreal humor in its own right.

“Sweet Insanity” is one puzzling film. It's extremely difficult to tell if this flick takes itself seriously. I've seen crazier stuff in other movies that took themselves seriously, but “Sweet Insanity”'s patent blend of “stupid” is just disorienting. Nonetheless, it's a charmingly stupid movie, super-saturated with horrific dialogue, insane direction and characters that are absurdly over-the-top.