Granted, there aren’t that many movies in existence concerned with a monster born from a man’s anal tract, yet it’s finally nice to see one without Jeremy Piven. Rimshot! But seriously, folks …
Independently funded because of course it is, the dark comedy Bad Milo! casts Ken Marino (TV’s Childrens Hospital) as Duncan, a tightly wound company man with some serious intestinal issues. While the official medical diagnosis is polyps — “a trooper in your pooper,” says the doc — the real issue is that his intestines play home to a squatty creature with big, cute eyes that belie a carnivorous killer instinct.
Whenever Duncan gets stressed-out, which is often, out of his butt plops the beast, nicknamed Milo. While Duncan remains unconscious from the sheer exhaustion and pain of passing a toddler-sized critter, Milo turns one of Duncan’s co-workers into a bloody, poopy pulp. Authorities blame a rabid raccoon, which our protagonist is keen to go along with, because hey, who’s going to believe a story about an anus demon?
Director/co-writer Jacob Vaughan hopes we will, and Marino and company do their straight-faced damnedest to sell it. Because they take the silly story seriously, the admittedly erratic Bad Milo! works a sliver more often than not. Playing against type as Duncan’s dowdy wife, Gillian Jacobs (TV’s Community) is right in step with Marino (who deserves some kind of awards commendation for total commitment to his initial shitting-Milo scene), but the show is stolen by comedian Kumail Nanjiani (Hell Baby) in his small role as the too-young lover of Duncan’s oversexed mother (Mary Kay Place, The Big Chill).
Toilet humor isn’t for everyone, yet oddly, Bad Milo! seems cleaner than its raunchy, R-rated brothers, likely because the jokes are delivered as black as bile. —Rod Lott