Director – Huck Botko, Screenplay – Jeff Tetreault, Producers – Reid Brody, Danny Roman & Bill Ryan, Photography – Luke Geissbuhler, Music – Didier Leplae & Joe Wong, Visual Effects – Filmworkers Club. Production Company – 2DS Productions/Roman Empire Productions.
Cast
Cam Gigandet (Rich Johnson), Nick Thune (Rich’s Penis), Katherine Cunningham (Lindsay), Jamie Chung (Jamie Foo), Kevin Miller (Josh Nelson), Kiley B. Moore (Rich’s Girlfriend), Jessica Joy (Emily), Meg Thalken (Doctor)
Plot
Rich Johnson works as a fitness trainer and allows himself to be led by his penis, sleeping with whoever he wants unconcerned if he is cheating on his girlfriends or not. After his girlfriend Jamie catches him with evidence of having slept with another woman and kicks him out, Rich wakes up to find his penis is missing. He then receives a call from someone claiming to be his penis and demonstrating it is with knowledge of his personal memories. He brings the penis home but it soon starts acting a jerk, sleeping with who it wants. The two search for ways to reunite without avail. Rich eventually finds the penis’s self-absorbed ways too much and kicks it out. The penis then goes over to the dark side. Rich meanwhile becomes attracted to his client Lindsay and the two go out, but without a penis he is unable to follow through and sleep with her. The penis picks up on Rich’s thoughts and decides to teach Rich a lesson by seducing Lindsay away from him.
Sometimes you shake your head and wonder how films manage to get greenlit and what possible audience that those responsible ever thought the films would find. This is definitely the case when it comes to Bad Johnson in which a man’s penis gains a life separate from himself. Surprisingly, there is precedent for this. Previously we had had Me and Him (1988) where Griffin Dunne’s penis starts talking to him, while there was also the Belgian puppet film Marquis (1989) where the lead character had a talking penis and there were ambulatory members featured also in Pervert! (2005) and Bad Biology (2008). Subsequent to this, there was the Japanese-made comedy Popran (2022) about a worldwide epidemic of men’s penises detaching themselves. The female equivalent was the porn film Chatterbox (1977) in which Candice Rialson had a talking vagina (although this did not detach itself) or perhaps the segment of Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (1972) featuring a giant rampaging breast.
For a time, Bad Johnson plays itself as a frat rat comedy where Cam Gigandet is a player and there is much complication and comic mishap about his sexual escapades – being found in bed with his girlfriend’s sister, trying to explain away evidence he was with another girl to his girlfriend Jaime Chung. Then the film turns into a strange variation on a Jekyll and Hyde Film – one where the penis gains its own life and heads off to indulge its worst impulses.
There are some amusements to the scenes where Cam Gigandet as the Dr Jekyll equivalent becomes in effect the nagging girlfriend/wife – insisting the penis clean up around the house, go to bed and even that it leave the toilet seat down! The latter sections of the film are swung around to have Cam and the penis fighting over Katherine Cunningham where Cam’s Dr Jekyll half represents the decent caring guy who wants to treat her romantically and have a relationship and the penis merely wants to use and then discard her.
(l to r) Cam Gigandet, Kevin Miller and Nick Thune as the penisCam Gigandet and Katherine Cunningham in Bad Johnson (2014)
The script is filled with the sort of showoffy self-congratulatory writing where you get the impression that the screenwriter was laughing himself silly or constantly patting himself on the back at the wittiness of their dialogue. Especially forced in this regard comes the scene with Cam Gigandet inventing excuses when Jamie Chung keeps finding evidence of him being with another woman, or the encounter with a sarcastic gay waiter that refuses to deliver Cam’s note to Katherine Cunningham. It leaves you unsure if you are watching a jock comedy or else a romantic comedy wherein a jerk learns the error of his ways.
Cam Gigandet does a reasonable job playing both a buffed meat-headed jerk who can be comically endearing while also swinging between romantically sincere. And it is to his credit that we end up believing him. Nick Thune is just required to be an insensitive jerk, although equally the scenes where he charms Katherine Cunningham have a surprising degree of sincerity to them. Katherine Cunningham projects a freshness and naturalness. It is the combination of the three of them that make the latter scenes with the two guys fighting over her work the best in the film and make Bad Johnson work passably.
Elsewhere director Huck Botko has made a handful of other relationship or frat related comedies such as Mail Order Wife (2004), The Virginity Hit (2010), Who Gets the Dog? (2016) and We Love You (2016). He also wrote the screenplay for The Last Exorcism (2010) and produced The Frankenstein Theory (2013).
