User Reviews

In my view, Swiss Army Man is an unflinching and clinical documentary of the emotional life of a mentally ill, severely repressed adolescent boy named Hank, whose diminished mental capacity has been exacerbated by a repressive and dominant father. The father's violations have induced excessive shame with regard to normal bodily functions (farting, pooping, fantasizing about girls, masturbating); the boy is disturbed by the powerful sexual urges experienced by any teenager, and is painfully shy, lonely and socially isolated. Hank has been laughed at by others; his father has called him retarded and presumably diminished his sense of self in plenty of other ways. His mother appears to be kinder towards him but his father is dominant.

Seeking love and kindness, Hank has fixated on a girl on the bus. He knows where she lives, runs away from home, and camps out in the woods by her home. All he has to eat is some junk food and soda. He quickly runs out of food and drinks bad water from a stream. With such a poor diet his body is exhibiting gastrointestinal problems and he's farting and pooping, shaming him further. He's having the normal erections and lustful thoughts of a teenager and is haunted by guilt and repression. His loneliness and sense of isolation manifests in a delusion that he is living on a desert island. He decides to kill himself but the rope he assembles from litter in the woods comes apart. Something triggers a deeper psychosis: perhaps the failed suicide attempt; perhaps he truly discovers a corpse in the woods; or perhaps he "simply" drops into a more manic episode. In any event he resolves his shameful feelings by splitting into two personalities, constructing an alter ego, Manny. It is Manny, not Hank, who is doing all the farting, having all the erections, having the mother fantasies. He is in two minds about whether to give Manny his fantasy about the girl since he wants to keep her for himself, since she is Hank's hope for rescue from his torment, his deliverer of love and affection and sexual gratification. In Manny all the shameful body functions become legitimized: the farts become a form of locomotion, the erections become the compass to the girl (she is after all the focus of these). Hank's euphoria (racing through the water on top of Manny) suggests a manic high.

Manny speaks with Hank's own inner repressed voice, or perhaps his mother's voice, telling him there's nothing wrong with his sexual desire, or his farting. Manny articulates his confusion about being laughed at and being called retarded. While Manny takes the role of Hank, Hank dresses as a woman, as the girl he wants to love him, seeking some kind of comfort and intimacy, trying desperately to fulfill his own needs by himself, trying to reinvent his life and find some emotional rescue. He tells Manny how to be attractive to women, how to walk and talk and wear shades, while admitting his own shyness and lack of courage. Manny meanwhile also "saves" him from his physical distress, becoming his magical source for the food and water he doesn't really have. In the woods Hank also encounters the normal life of the American northwest, a raccoon, animal sounds in the bushes, juniper berries that make him sick. A sewage pipe across a stream (source of the dirty water he's drinking) becomes in his imagination a dangerous crossing over a great river. He falls in and is "rescued" by Manny.

An encounter, real or imagined, with a bear finally drives Hank out of the woods, perhaps wounded. The sad story ends when he emerges into the back yard of the woman he has fixated on. She discovers him talking to her young daughter, gets her child away, and calls for help. Hank only sees that she is caring for him. Things now start happening very quickly: the police and social services and Hank's father arrive. His father walks away from him, rejecting him once again. Hank runs off and is chased and brought back. He rationalizes this experience of "rescue" into a new script where everyone now understands and cares for him. He has been welcomed home, his father gives him the slightest nod of approval, an indication by the filmmakers of how Hank is converting the most insignificant signals into experiences of approval and understanding. Everything will be OK. Manny no longer has a role; he takes off, seen by everyone to be taking Hank's shame with him. Hank is now in the hands of others, believing in his salvation while doubtless en route to medication and mental health services.

The film is quite unflinching in its portrayal and gives away nothing. It is a sign of its success that the emotional experience of the viewer is not sadness for this terribly sad story, but of bewilderment and an uneasy humor. Viewers have reported a wide range of responses: leaving early, disgusted by the "cheap laughs"; feeling that it delivered an immature, childish philosophy; experiencing it as a profound meditation on modern life and death. But in fact the movie does nothing more or less than attempt to describe an episode in the life of a disturbed, possibly bi-polar or schizophrenic, certainly repressed and emotionally violated young man. Whether the depiction is psychologically accurate I am not qualified to say, but the preoccupation with farts and sex and childish philosophies are not those of the film makers but of the young man being portrayed. It is to the credit of the film makers that they never deviated from this portrayal and never made any attempt to distinguish themselves from the subject, to the extent that many people may be entirely mistaken in their interpretation of the film and of the directors' abilities and intentions. That is both courageous and skillful. Well done Daniels!!

I was compelled to respond to all the 1 star reviews. As someone who actually really dislikes fart jokes, finding them to be lazy writing that only attempts to appeal to the lowest common denominator, I can sympathize with anyone who would be skeptical of this movie at first.

But I love this movie. These are not merely fart jokes, but a much deeper and richer metaphor. There's another review on here that goes into some length to describe how Dano's character Hank is an unreliable narrator, a troubled and delusional, suicidal man in the midst of a mental breakdown. While I find that review to be an accurate reading it doesn't fully explore the film's use of metaphor which function on many levels. The first level is the film's plot itself which can be read as everything we are being shown is really happening, or that we are seeing things from Hank's perspective and he is hallucinating and delusional.

But to go deeper than that, this is a movie about shame and repression so strong that it makes you unable to express your own inner feelings. It directly comments on this in numerous ways, through the long discussion of Hanks's shameful feelings about masturbation, how he constantly tells Manny not to do things because people will think he is being weird. Manny is doing what comes naturally and just being honest and talking without filters. Everything is new to him and he approaches the world like a child, wondering and asking questions about everything.

Manny is innocent and has not learned shame yet. Society shames all of us, and teaches us that there are right and wrong ways of behaving. There are proper ways of behaving in public, and as children, when we act naturally, we are usually shamed, maybe even punished for breaking the rules of polite society. These rules rely on numerous pre-concieved notions but are in actuality completely arbitrary. The idea that a fart or a boner are gross are value judgement that rely on the idea that there can be something wrong with our natural body functions. Thus are we taught to be ashamed of our own bodies, taught to conceal nudity and hold in our farts.

I could go further into how religion and polite society frame innocent body functions as perversions, but Hank's insecurity extends into shaming of other behavior, his repression is so extensive that he is uncomfortable in expressing basic emotions.

This is explored through the recreation of meeting the girl on the bus, and how someone without preconceived notions of right and wrong behavior and societal repression would approach the situation entirely differently. Dano is so afraid of how other's might perceive him that he never approaches this girl he feels a connection to, Hank is his un-repressed inner asking him why anyone would ever stop themselves from doing what would make them happy.

So this movie is questioning society's arbitrary rules, public shaming that causes social anxiety and shyness and forces people to conform to socially acceptable behavior. It uses body functions as a metaphor for that. Farting in the film is a metaphor for holding feelings inside or hiding your true self. In the final scene of the film Hank lets out a fart in front of other people in a last desperate attempt to revive Manny, Manny who represents his inner child. Throughout the film he brings Danny to life by letting go of and coming to terms with his inner repression, learning to re-approach life with playfulness, curiosity, and creativity, as a child would. So in that final scene he is "letting go" of his repression.

There is one more level that all of this operates on, and it's here that I have to say that I have pity for people who could not see any deeper meaning in this film. Because it confronts the ways in which we take ourselves too seriously, when in reality part of the human condition is living in these strange and amazing and earthy vessels we call bodies. And bodies are amazing things that operate on a level of complexity that science still struggles to understand, outright magical in fact. But we ignore that magic and instead frame our viewing of our bodies with shame and repression. The film playfully confronts us with bodily functions in order to make us confront our own relationships with our bodies. As someone who normally despises bathroom humor I was amazed to find myself laughing out loud and feeling outright joy at moments of reveling in bodily humor that were outright triumphant.

This is in part a movie that tries to teach us to enjoy life by taking it less seriously, by showing us a man who is learning to do the same. And so if you despise this movie, I think if you spent your time doing nothing but trying to learn to find enjoyment in this film, and trying to understand why other people do, you would find yourself letting go of repression and finding empathy beyond what you knew you were capable of. I think it would be entirely worth it.

Some people will love this film and some people will hate it. I can see both sides of this argument & I'm not going to try and persuade anyone to watch it or avoid it. This is just a few of my thoughts on why I personally didn't like it.

The film just didn't connect with me, it started off reasonably well as we are introduced to the two characters but after that it becomes a real slog which is seemingly going nowhere. We have constant fart & boner jokes and not much else. Then we have them moving from one place to another and going over the same jokes again which to me just wasn't funny. I didn't laugh once throughout the film.

Although the film is undoubtedly unique, it just doesn't work for me as I felt no emotional attachment to either of the characters and at times I was utterly lost as to what the film was actually trying to be. The performances of Dano & Radcliffe were fine but for a film described as 'Adventure, Comedy, Drama' it was lacking in all 3 aspects. The whole soundtrack with the two characters singing parts of it was also pretty annoying.

After an hour I had lost all interest and simply didn't care how it was going to end. So the film is obviously not for me but I can appreciate some parts of it and people with different taste will like it and that's fine.

4/10, didn't like it but it had two good lead performances and at least tried to be original. I feel this could've worked better as a short film or maybe TV mini series.

Hank Thompson (Paul Dano) is a castaway on a deserted island. He's preparing to hang himself when a body (Daniel Radcliffe) washes ashore. Using body gases, he rides the body like a jet ski back to the mainland. He starts talking to the body giving it the name Manny and teaching it rudimentary skills. Manny produces magical miracles to help him survive.

Farts! Farts! Farts! I'm not offended but after some slightly amusing starting wackiness, the weirdness starts to bore me. None of it actually funny and it becomes more repetitive as it goes along. It's definitely unlike most other movies and I give it points for being different. It's great to see something unusual but otherwise, I would suggest skipping this.

Seriously? IMDb is usually pretty good at scoring movies, so I don't know how they grossly overrated this "film."

It's hard to decide which is more insufferable: the juvenile subject matter or the fact that this film, about a flatulent corpse that washes up on the beach, has pretensions of philosophical depth shielded by the worlds longest fart gag. Paul Dano stars as Hank, stranded on a deserted island and about to end it all, when the long-dead "Manny" (Daniel Radcliffe) washes up. A build-up of gastric air provides propulsion and Hank is able to ride his new friend like a jetski made of rotting flesh. And that's just the first of Manny's surprising uses.

How the CIA could choose water boarding when torture like this exists, I mean just wow. Save your money.

This is a movie who's concept sounds awful on paper; A man stranded on an island befriends a corpse with magical powers that washes up on the beach and they try to find their way back to civilisation together. And yet the trailer held the promise of something much deeper under the inherent silliness. Nevertheless, while I was prepared for a bizarre outing, Swiss Army Man turned out to be even weirder than I expected. Even after having slept on it, I'm still not sure what to make of it.

The bulk of the movie is Hank, a lonely, suicidal man, stranded away from civilisation, travelling through a forest with a dead body guiding the way. The body seems to supply Hank with everything he needs, like projectile spit for water, or the ability to shoot harpoons from his mouth. In return, Hank teaches Manny, the corpse, all about love, life, and what is socially acceptable (pro-tip, it's not farting or erections). It comes to light that Hank has a crush for a girl he saw on the bus, who he has become somewhat fixated with, and so Manny by extension becomes fixated with as well, and they roleplay various scenarios that never happened.

Swiss Army Man is labelled as a comedy, so there are jokes, and it is reasonably light-hearted. Unfortunately, bar a few choice moments, the humour did absolutely nothing for me. In fact I would go so far as to say it kind of ruined the experience for me. The humour in Swiss Army Man isn't just crude, it's juvenile. Crude humour I can deal with, but juvenile humour is just not my dish. The biggest running joke of the whole movie is that Manny farts a lot. He's a dead body full of decomposition gases, of course he farts a lot. But you know, farting is funny so that makes this a comedy right? Erections as well, Manny gets erections when he looks at pictures of half-naked women, and that's funny too, obviously.

Thing is, while this juvenile humour took me out of the movie completely, and is not my kind of humour at all, I can at least understand it's reasoning. Half the movie's message is about what is and isn't socially acceptable. Farting and getting an erection in public are generally considered big taboos, but the movie's point is why? They're natural processes of the human body and shouldn't be ashamed of. Everyone farts. Everyone poops. Everyone masturbates. If everyone does it, why is everyone so worried about other people knowing it? As movie messages go, it's a fairly unique one to approach.

The acting is pretty top-notch across the board though. Paul Dano does what he does best as the nerdy, shy Hank. He shows a real turmoil, and his conversations with a dead body are so natural. For me though, the star of the show is Daniel Radcliffe who once again goes out of his way to separate himself from the Harry Potter image. His dead body impression is the most accurate I've seen. They had a dummy available, but he insisted on doing most of it himself, and it shows. His floppiness is unmatched, and his ability to move his body in unnatural ways and resist any kind of flinching is really impressive. On the more emotional side though, he shows a fantastic sense of innocence and curiosity that obviously mirrors Hank's own psyche.

The last thing I'll note is the soundtrack, which is almost entirely acapella. It's spurned on by the two characters themselves, layered up from sounds they make and notes they hum and harmonise together. There's one moment in particular that uses a full acapella version of the Jurassic Park theme, and that alone almost makes the movie worth watching.

I'm still not sure what to make of Swiss Army Man. It has it's good moments and it's bad moments. Fundamentally it is simply one of the most unique and original movies on the market. The Daniels' ability to take what sounds like such a god-awful concept and work it into something that's almost deep and moving is impressive. It's biggest sin is that it simply doesn't make a whole load of sense and makes no effort to try and explain anything, instead opting to offer opposing clues to cement different interpretations, making any interpretation null and void. Was it a story about a man and his dead body finding their way back home, or was it a story about a man and his dead body obsessing over a girl they don't know and being driven mad by loneliness? Even now I'm left clueless. It was a find movie of self-discovery right up until the third act when it just stopped making any kind of sense at all. I give Swiss Army Man a conflicted 6/10.

After watching this movie, I wiped the tears from my eyes, went into the restroom and washed my face, then walked straight into the next screening of Swiss Army Man. I've only ever done this twice in my life; first with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), then with Little Miss Sunshine (2006, also with Paul Dano). 10 years later, I've finally experienced that same feeling again. This is a movie for the rest of us; the lonely loser weirdos that don't fit in anywhere. I don't care whether you're male, female, straight, gay or whatever, if you have just a little bit of weird inside you, this movie is for you.

I guess there are a couple different ways to look at the narrative. You can imagine that Paul Dano is basically out on his own, lost in the wilderness, and he's hoisting around a dead body on his back. Like Hank says at one point, maybe he's just hallucinating all of this, and he's really just using the body as a way to relay his thoughts. Going back to the basics, speaking to the body as if it is an innocent, childlike, unfettered vessel. In a way, he is trying to convince himself why he should go on living. (It's been said that the logline of this movie is that it's about a suicidal man trying to convince a dead body why life is worth living.) There were a couple of moments where I was convinced the movie was going to take the "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" route and reveal that Hank had succeeded in his suicide, but I'm glad it didn't take that predictable twist (although it is a valid interpretation). Then there is the magical element, which is fully supported by the ending (the objective view of the cameraman's camera, as well as everyone else who witnesses Manny jetting out into the sea) and everything actually happened as we saw it. How reliable is Hank as a narrator? Is it even fair to hold this up to the same conventions as other movies? It's still entirely satisfying if you watch the movie at face value without any other explanation for what's going on.

The other thing that popped in my head while watching it is whether or not this is a "gay" allegory. I was more convinced of this during my second screening than I was at my first one. But again, I don't think it's fair to hold this up to the same conventions of other movies. Although there is cross-dressing and the characters share a kiss (though it could be argued Hank was just trying to get oxygen, or perhaps blow into Manny's mouth in order to stimulate more gases/dislodge the cork which then propel them out of the water), it is never explicitly stated that they may be homosexual (or necrosexual, if that's the right word). At the end, Manny proclaims that they are "best friends," which I think is the correct way to view their relationship. Nevertheless, the theme of the movie seems to be about finding someone you can be yourself with, regardless of gender or sexual norms. If you choose to view all the events that happen in the film as being Hank's hallucinations (despite the fact that Manny hefts him on his back during the last leg of their journey, after Hank breaks his leg), I think the meaning becomes more about loving yourself for who you are. The cathartic moment comes at the very end when Hank admits he built all those strange creations and is finally able to fart in public. Basically, let your freak flag fly. This is just the kind of movie I needed at this juncture in my life.