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Review: The Catechism Cataclysm

Todd Rohal's strange IFC film
By ALEXANDRA CAVALLO  |  November 1, 2011
3.0 3.0 Stars



A priest and a washed-up heavy metal drummer step into a boat. . . . This isn't the start of a joke, but rather the plot of Todd Rohal's strange IFC film. Father Billy (Steve Little) is a disillusioned priest who prefers YouTube to sermons. When he's forced on sabbatical for telling off-color parables at Bible study, Billy tracks down his high school idol Robbie (Robert Longstreet) and badgers him into a canoe trip. As they float downriver Robbie tells existential stories that Billy doesn't get because they don't have endings, and the audience doesn't get because they're strange, man. It's all shits (literally) and giggles until the duo meet a pair of Japanese girls with a jones for Mark Twain and their mute chaperone. Then things get weird. The last 20 minutes of this delightfully bizarre movie are a monumental head trip, as the girls reveal sinister motives. The point to the whole shebang seems to be, as Robbie's stories imply, that there is no point.

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ARTICLES BY ALEXANDRA CAVALLO
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