DVD Review: “Killing Hasselhoff” Inspires More Than A Few Laughs

[yasr_overall_rating]
 

A struggling nightclub owner resorts to desperate measures in order to pay off a loan shark.

Judging from the trailer for “Killing Hasselhoff,” I honestly expected this movie to be disastrous. But I digress, sitting down to watch it with absolutely no expectations whatsoever, my wife and I actually laughed out loud and on more than one occasion. The film hearkens back to the low-brow comedies of the ’80s and seeing that Mr. Hasselhoff himself, was a product of the ’80s, they both go hand in hand.

Chris (Ken Jeong) lives in Los Angeles and is a struggling nightclub owner. Every year, he and his buddies Fish (Rhys Darby) and Tommy (Jim Jefferies) participate in the annual “Who Will Die This Year” celebrity death pool, and every year, Chris always picks David Hasselhoff. He doesn’t hate him, he just feels that his career has run its course and that he should keel over any day. When Hasselhoff’s manager Barry (Jon Lovitz) calls Chris and says that the Hoff would like to make an appearance at his club within the week, Chris goes all out to promote the gig but the night of his appearance, the Hoff changes his mind and travels to another club with his entourage of women in tow. This pisses Chriss off and things get progressively worse when he discovers an underage famous singer in his VIP room snorting cocaine and when he tries to have her and her companions ejected from the club, he accidentally gets embroiled in a photo op which leads to charges of sexual and physical abuse against said singer.

With his fiancée refusing to believe that he is innocent, and with him owing $400,000 to a local loan shark, he goes to visit his friend Fish, who is now in a psych ward having lost his mind after discovering his girlfriend was cheating on him. While there, Chris opens up to him about everything going on in his life and Fish hands him a diary he was writing which includes various methods and techniques on how to kill a person, tactics he had planned on executing on his girlfriend’s lover before he was admitted. With his life in the toilet, Chris decides to kill Hasselhoff himself, then he can claim the money from the celebrity death pool which now stands at an estimated half a million dollars. What could possibly go wrong?

A movie like this cannot be taken seriously and the fact that David Hasselhoff appears in the movie as himself, granted, an exaggerated version, and that he helped produce it, means that the man is not afraid to poke fun at himself. I think too many celebrities these days take themselves and their careers way too seriously so it is actually refreshing to see an icon like Mr. Hasselhoff, ridicule his life, career, and fellow co-stars, just for fun. I don’t think he will ever be taken seriously again, at least where his career is concerned so why not roll with it? Throughout the film, he constantly explains to his manager Barry, that he wants to make a martial arts superhero musical, where his character can shoot lasers out of his dick. While Barry emphatically refuses to believe that it will ever happen, believe it or not, this reviewer was actually intrigued by the very thought of witnessing such a spectacle, either on stage or on film. I also think that it would elevate superhero movies to the next level to the point that Marvel would have their work cut out for them.

While it works as a comedy, the character that needs to be killed off could have been played by any aging TV or movie star (George Hamilton, Lee Majors anyone?) but the fact that Hasselhoff plays the part, means that his past in TV accompanies him so we are privy to an endless supply of jokes about “Knight Rider” and “Baywatch,” and Mr. Hasselhoff’s celebrity status in Germany. The cast overall appears to be having fun and as the final credits roll, we get to see bloopers and outtakes, a testament to the fact that it was just as much fun making this film, as it was watching it.

Available on DVD & Digital HD Tuesday, August 29th