Velocipastor is here and we are not ready

Velocipastor tells you exactly what it is very early.  Father Doug Jones (Greg Cohan) is present to witness the car bomb that kills his parents.  We hear the explosion, then the camera cuts to the spot where the burning car should be.  Instead we get an empty street with the words “VFX: Burning Car” superimposed.  

That’s the ride we bought a ticket for.

This is a movie that knows exactly what it is and does not give a single fuck if you understand it or not.  The premise is pretty simple: what if a Priest were part dinosaur and set out to fight evil?  I assume that the writer came up with this idea while very, very stoned. If not, then I maybe worry for their sanity.

Here’s the plot, folks: Father Jones witnesses the murder of his parents in the car bombing mentioned above.  While having a standard crisis of faith of the sort that movie priests are known to have, he travels to China.  He meets a woman who is dying. She has an incurable arrow through the chest. The dying woman entrusts Doug with a dinosaur fossil (there’s nothing weird about giving a complete stranger the fossilized remains of a dinosaur claw as you’re dying, stop saying that’s weird. You’re weird!).  Doug accidentally cuts himself with the claw.  And without explanation he’s back in America where he meets a hooker named Carol (Alyssa Kempinksi). And it turns out that he’s turning into a dinosaur and killing people. The movie has no interest in explaining why, or how, or anything really.

Doug, with the help of Carol, decides that he make a more positive impact on the world as a murderous dinosaur than he ever could as a priest. Really, when you think about, he’s right. On balance the world would be a better place if all the priests somehow morphed into dinosaurs, but I digress.

We get to watch the Velocipastor fight ninjas, kill drug dealers and, best of all, rip the throat right out of a pimp named Frankie Mermaid in a confessional. Is it over the top? You can’t see the top from where this film lives. This movie is non-stop crazy dipped in drug induced fever dream.  It’s all kinds of crazy fun.

If you’re like me, you knew that this film was coming and you literally could not wait for it.  Velocipastor lives up to the expectations set by the title. You get what you paid for, and maybe a bit more. If I had any complaint it is that the jokes are not as fast I they could be. I sort of expected a Police Squad rhythm, but the timing here is more traditional.

The acting is exactly as “good” as it needs to be for the material. The effects are cheesey and low-rent, which is to be expected.  If you’re the type of person that’s tempted to watch a movie called Velocipastor, then you should see this movie as soon as you possibly can.