Movie Review: ‘Blue Iguana’

Review by Jacquelin Hipes

It may be coming out in the latter half of 2018, but Blue Iguana was actually filmed a couple of years ago. One might assume that the newly minted “Academy Award-winning” tag in front of Sam Rockwell’s name has something to do with this bumbling heist-gone-wrong comedy making it to the light of day. A fair guess, as there is little besides Rockwell to elevate this unfunny wannabe noir into anything more than a waste of time.

Ex-cons Eddie (Sam Rockwell) and Paul (Ben Schwartz) are working in a diner, trying to keep their heads down and abide by the terms of their parole, when British lawyer Katherine Rookwood (Phoebe Fox) strolls in with a lucrative offer. She wants them to fly to England, intercept the hand-off of an unknown package, and deliver the contents to her for her boss. The question of why she traveled so far for these two particular men, as well as the problem of getting two former jailbirds on an international flight are blithely dispensed with, landing the trio in London with no further fanfare.

The original heist goes cartoonishly wrong, however, and that failure causes the oddball crew to set their sights on a larger prize: the Blue Iguana diamond, simultaneously being pursued by a middling criminal and his greasy lackeys. The hijinks that follow are decidedly unfunny, punctuated by an incongruous degree of explicit violence that serves less as a counterpoint than a clumsily wielded sledgehammer.

It’s difficult to rise above material as stale as the junk food the characters are perpetually gorging on, but Rockwell does his best. Schwartz resurrects his Parks and Rec character Jean-Ralphio, with very little added on to his trademark traits: loud, brash, and exaggeratedly clueless. Fox’s deadpan lawyer falls flat as well; a straight(wo)man isn’t exactly needed when the buffoons aren’t able to solicit laughter on their own.

She does have one rousing success, though, choosing the perfect word to describe both Eddie and Paul’s failed job and the film as a whole: shambolic. A plot designed to confuse and gags that fail to entertain add up to a confounding effort by writer/director Hadi Hajaig. The aim of a splashy, neo-noir heist thriller makes itself known from time to time, but the final product falls wide of the mark. In theaters now.