"Backfire!" is currently holding a 2.8 user average on IMDb. I understand that many of the site's lowest rated films are bad comedies ("Epic Movie", just to name one rightful claim). But this is not quite that sort of a thing. The relatively low-budget film was the feature film debut of director A. Dean Bell. It is the kind of film that will divide audiences based on their taste in matters relating to humor, but it knows what kind of a comedy it wants to be. Therefore I don't see the low user average as deserved, since this film does what it wants to do just fine, it just happens to be for a niche audience. Let me show you what I mean.
The film, a parody of Ron Howard's "Backdraft" (1991, remember that?), takes place in a universe where all firefighters are female. Jeremy Jackson (Josh Mosby) wants to be the world's first male firewoman. He has his reasons. All his life he has been blamed for the death of his firefighter mother, not least by his firefighter sister (Mary McCormack). Jeremy tries to overcome all the prejudice, and goes on to discover a dangerous conspiracy...
Now let's talk about the humor. It's not as low-brow as you would expect. Instead it's puns and dad jokes, jokes so bad you laugh because of the badness. The main way of constructing comedy comes in the way of wordplay, or actually in the film's way of taking wordplay literally. Here's two examples of jokes:
1) Jeremy tells the story of his dead mother, and rubs salt to his wounds. LITERALLY.
2) Someone says: "I won't stand for this". AND SITS DOWN.
If you're the kind of person who finds dumb word/proverb/saying/language -related humor funny, then this film has a lot of it. I'm usually more of a "Frasier" kind of guy when it comes to my comedic preference, but this film had me laughing all the way through. I was simultaneously embarrassed and endeared by the film. Somehow they have also managed to lure in several older stars, like Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and Telley Savalas. The old-timers seemed to have a good time, especially Mitchum.
This may be a dumb comedy, but it's one with a good heart and nice atmosphere. You might not like the majority of the word puns, put you got to give the film this. It sticks with the bit. It is a dedicated production, that doesn't feel studio-mandated, but instead a silly passion project. I recommend it.
