A movie like Bad Milo has an immediate advantage when it comes to capturing potential viewers’ attention, because its premise is so ridiculous that you can’t help but be drawn to it, even if just for the sake of morbid curiosity. The movie stars Ken Marino (Wet Hot American Summer, Party Down) as a character named Duncan, and said premise is that Duncan has repressed all of his stress and rage so deeply inside of him that it’s created a little sharp-toothed, slimy-skinned demon named Milo who lives in his lower intestine. Whenever Duncan has a particularly bad day his body gets out of control, he shits out Milo, Milo runs around town killing all of the people who have been crossing him, and then he climbs back up inside Duncan’s butt. See? Just a brief plot description already has you wanting to see for yourself what it’s all about. The problem is, when your movie has a premise that’s this far out there, you make an unspoken promise to the viewer that what they’re going to see is going to be crazier and grosser than anything they’ve seen in a long time—and Bad Milo just doesn’t have the stuff to fulfill that promise.
Where the movie goes wrong is that, instead of focusing on things like ridiculous gore or gross out gags, co-writer/director Jacob Vaughan and his writing partner Benjamin Hayes play Duncan’s affliction almost completely straight, and they mine his plight for all of the legitimate drama that it’s worth. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with taking your material seriously and playing things straight, but when you’re making a movie about a butt demon, a little of that goes a long way. In a movie like this you’re better off sticking with the splatter that people expect instead of trying to get them to actually care about supernatural bowel movements and their ramifications. That might be too much to ask of any filmmaker, or any audience.
While the film does have a few moments of gore that are over the top and fun, and it does produce a handful of chuckles thanks to childish humor, there’s also another promise it makes to the audience and doesn’t quite keep that prevents it from being even a middle of the road recommendation. In addition to Marino in the lead role, this movie also has an actress as funny as Community’s Gillian Jacobs playing Duncan’s wife, a character actor as eccentric and unique as Peter Stormare playing his therapist, and a comedy fan idol as iconic as Stephen Root playing his father, and it ends up doing almost nothing with them. Jacobs doesn’t get a single chance to be funny, Stormare doesn’t get enough screen time to turn his character into much, and while Root absolutely steals the scene that’s the big showcase for his character, that moment is so crazy and fun that it makes you wish it would have been more indicative of the somewhat dour film that surrounds it. Bringing all of that talent together and then not doing much with them is a great way to disappoint an audience. Bad Milo isn’t terrible or anything, and it’s probably even pretty watchable in a vacuum, but it isn’t likely going to be the movie that you’re hoping it is.
