The Machine review: Mark Hamill is the engine that makes this so-so comedy run
Stand-up comic Bert Kreischer plays a long-ago party animal kidnapped by Russians in a comedy that's most effective when it veers into hard-R action
Shirtless, un-PC, and sporting the daddiest of dad bods, Bert Kreischer feels like the natural outcome of a Simpsons episode in which Homer Simpson, while drunk, shirtless, and screaming in public, accidentally becomes a popular stand-up comedian. While in college, Kreischer was the inspiration for the 2002 comedy National Lampoon’s Van Wilder, though he looks less like Ryan Reynolds and more like a cross between Home Improvement’s Tim and Al. Now playing a version of himself in The Machine, he finds himself in family therapy, where it turns out that a lifetime of comedy based on a party animal persona can be hell on the wife and kids when you live the gimmick.
His problem isn’t just that he can’t mentally break free of the persona’s baggage, but that said baggage is very much not done with him. One of the real Kreischer’s popular stories is about the time he was young, wasted, and in Russia, where he accidentally found himself helping mobsters to rob a train. The movie character version finds out, during his daughter’s sweet 16 party, that there are people in Russia who still hold a grudge. Irina (Croatian star Iva Babic) has a sudden need to find one of the items stolen two decades ago, so she kidnaps Bert and his hectoring, toxic father Albert II (Mark Hamill), whisking them to Russia to retrace the steps of younger Bert, played in flashback by YouTuber Jimmy Tatro.
The dual central jokes in The Machine are (1) that while Kreischer’s unapologetic drunk dad humor comes off as borderline toxic masculinity in the U.S., he’s progressive and almost feminist by Russian standards; and (2) his life and background as a quintessential Florida Man make him uniquely suited to the craziness of Russia. As such, he has—at least in the movie—become a pop icon over there; a party legend who can out-drink the locals and crash through walls.
Bear in mind that this is very much movie-Russia, a place where everyone is either an invincible, track-suited criminal with cross tattoos, or a happy peasant living 50 years behind the times. It’s not the modern, kleptocrat Russia, self-inflicting wounds on itself in a brutally pointless war of choice. Indeed, despite their shared love of shirtlessness, Kreischer never once mentions Vladimir Putin, presumably because Sony would like to actually play this movie in Russia someday.