Let's Go to Prison (2006)

Directed by: Bob Odenkirk

Written by: Robert Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon & Michael Patrick Jann (written by) & Jim Hogshire (book)

John Lyshitski wants to get revenge on the judge that put him in jail. Since the judge is dead, he wants to make the judge's son's life a living hell. He frames him for a crime and then joins him in prison.

---

I've been trying to understand the difference between the unrated and the rated versions, and apparently the difference isn't much. From what I understood, the unrated version is 90 minutes while rated is 84 minutes, and the one on Netflix was 90 minutes, but it didn't have the scene movie-censorship.com said was the key difference. Seems that the missing scene wasn't as crucial as the people in the IMDb message boards might let you believe, but you can never trust strangers online, can you?

I chose to watch this movie because of three different factors. First, Will Arnett is in it. Second, it's directed by Bob Odenkirk, while I know practically nothing about his directing, his name still made me interested. But the third and final reason that made me watch Let's Go To Prison was that it seemed extremely stupid. It's always refreshing to watch stupid comedies, instead of extremely clever and weird art dramas, because those get boring really quick. Sure, silly comedies with the same exact plotlines get boring, but at least they are somewhat fun. 

But was this comedy stupid? To be honest, it could've been stupider. The plot was actually pretty sly, just like it says on the poster. The writing amazed me, not because it was that brilliant, but mostly because I was expecting something so much worse. It actually was pretty fun to listen to the dialogue, and it sometimes was even clever.  Also certain plot twists were no easy to predict, and the movie was so much fun. I felt ashamed of how many inappropriate things felt funny in this film.

Also this movie has the perfect ending. There's clever twist and then the last setting feels idyllic.

The story was told in an interesting way. First-person narrative is always pretty interesting in a movie, especially when the movie is based on a book. You can't use all the narrative used in the novel, so what do you pick? The writers of this movie sure knew how to pick the exact right lines and nothing more, nothing less. Also there were a lot of fun effects used, mostly the cinematography: zooming, angles and such.

Let's Go to Prison feels weirdly fresh. The idea feels used, but the movie itself feels different from the typical movies of this genre. It was a lot different from what I expected, a lot funnier and a lot cleverer. I think I actually liked this movie.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

7 / 10