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- The Treasure of Foggy Mountain feels like a series of sketches stitched together, which can be hit or miss, but mostly works. The film showcases the strengths and weaknesses of each member of the Please Don't Destroy comedy group.
collider.com › please-dont-destroy-foggy-mountain-review'Please Don’t Destroy — The Treasure of Foggy Mountain' Review
42% Tomatometer 33 Reviews 90% Audience Score 1,000+ Ratings In PLEASE DON'T DESTROY: THE TREASURE OF FOGGY MOUNTAIN, John Goodman narrates the adventure of Ben, Martin, and John, three...
- (33)
- Paul Briganti
- R
- Comedy, Adventure
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Nov 17, 2023 · Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain (2023) Rated R for pervasive language, sexual material, some drug material, brief graphic nudity and violence. 91 minutes
- Saturday Night Live’s latest digital-video goofballs get a premature, albeit still funny, movie vehicle.
- Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain Gallery
- Which 21st century SNL star should get their own movie vehicle to do whatever they want with?
- SNL Stars' Best Comedies
- Verdict
By Jesse Hassenger
Updated: Nov 17, 2023 8:50 pm
Posted: Nov 17, 2023 8:41 pm
Expressing cynicism about a bunch of silly four-minute video shorts on Saturday Night Live is tricky business. After all, the whole point of Please Don’t Destroy, a trio of SNL writers who also make their own self-starring pre-taped sketches, is to offer a fresh, youthful shot of lunacy into an otherwise-regimented variety-show format, just like the Lonely Island (Andy Samberg and friends) and Good Neighbor (the Kyle Mooney/Beck Bennett collective) before them. But while the PDD boys have a sketch-comedy background similar to their SNL predecessors, presented with TikTok-quick pacing, there’s something ever-so-slightly cloistered about their work – and not just because most of their bits are set in the same cramped writing office, or even because two-thirds of them have a direct family connection to SNL.
Or, given Foggy Mountain’s canceled theatrical run and the involvement of producer Judd Apatow, maybe the sights were set on an SNL crossover hit à la Anchorman. Studio comedies could certainly use the fresh blood. In the streaming era, it often feels as if the genre has been stripped of its energy, sensibility, and laughs, leaving behind only vestiges of high concepts and familiar stars. The Treasure of Foggy Mountain bears the unmistakable signs of young men allowed to follow their ridiculous whims. John (John Higgins), Martin (Martin Herlihy), and Ben (Ben Marshall) are man-children who may have indulged too many of those whims over the years, and now are left, in the tradition of other Apatow features, wondering whether it’s time to grow up.
The three guys are roommates and work together at an outdoor-supply store run by Ben’s dad (Conan O’Brien), which Ben hopes to take over some day – not because he’s especially outdoorsy or business-savvy, but because he thinks his dad will love him more if he succeeds at it. (He may not be wrong.) Martin, meanwhile, wants to buy a house with the religious girlfriend who’s making him get an adult baptism. John feels left out, because his friends are starting to express at least nominally adult ambitions, while he misses their youthful camaraderie. So when they have the unexpected chance to track down a long-lost and ultra-valuable treasure hidden somewhere in a local mountain, John spearheads a mission for greater glory.
Aidy Bryant
Cecily Strong
Vanessa Bayer
Beck Bennett and Kyle Mooney
Andrew Dismukes
Kenan Thompson
Foggy Mountain, then, is a repository of some great jokes that almost entirely lacks a genuine point of view. When a Will Ferrell character acts like an imbecile, he’s usually grappling with an outdated sense of American masculine dominance. Andy Samberg and the Lonely Island spoof the puffed-up swagger of contemporary pop music, an act of self-negging fandom. Kyle Mooney and Beck Bennett often filter their doofiness through early-’90s junk culture, paying homage to their childhood faves while satirizing their limited emotional range. Please Don’t Destroy looks at extended adolescence through the lens of… other comedies like this. It bites the style of arrested-development classics like Hot Rod or the underseen Mystery Team without their bizarre conviction. To ask just one style question that director Paul Briganti should have posed: Why is this movie narrated by John Goodman? He barely has any jokes and imparts very little exposition. What’s the point, if it’s not providing laughter or clarity?
Comedies don’t need to build toward a big central idea to be funny. Some of them barely need to be coherent, let alone thematically resonant. That’s the great advantage of comedy: big laughs can trump a lot of shortcomings. But The Treasure of Foggy Mountain is so similar to so many better comedies that it’s hard to get around how empty it feels – like a victory lap without the race.
Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain has way more laughs than the standard direct-to-streaming comedy, with some gloriously silly running gags and hilarious non sequiturs. But it lacks any real point of view behind that silliness, and ultimately feels like this comic trio has made their own version of Hot Rod or Mystery Team simply ...
- Jesse Hassenger
The comedy Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain is a hit-or-miss affair, but one that hits slightly more than it misses. Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Nov 17,...
Nov 17, 2023 · Film. Reviews. Nov 17, 2023 6:00am PT. ‘Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain’ Review: A So-So Feature Debut From the Hilarious ‘SNL’ Trio. While hardly a...
Nov 17, 2023 · Movie Reviews. ‘Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain’ Review: The Latest Proof That Sketch Comedy Works Best in Small Doses. The comedy troupe and 'SNL' contributors...
Nov 17, 2023 · Armed with nothing but a mysterious compass and the legend of a treasure buried somewhere on Foggy Mountain, our heroes set off into the great unknown, hoping to become rich beyond their...
