Summary
Stretching out barely fleshed-out sketch caricatures into a full feature results in this irritating mess with few, if any, saving graces.
If you’ve ever watched a Saturday Night Live skit wishing it was a full feature, Peacock’s Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain is the movie for you. Staring the SNL comedic trio comprised of Ben Marshall, John Higgins, and Martin Herlihy, the film was directed by Paul Briganti and features a slew of A-lister cameos, goofy jokes that fail to land, and annoying characters no one wants to spend more than 5 minutes with.
Sketch comedy tends to work because you don’t have to spend more than a few minutes at a time with exaggerated caricatures of human beings. This type of humor rarely translates well in a full feature, and this film is proof of that.
Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain review and plot summary
As John Goodman (from The Big Lebowski) eloquently narrates in the opening scenes, Foggy Mountain is home to Queen Marie Antoinette’s bust, and the person who put it there hid the key in a special compass. Three children find the mystical artifact while exploring the forest but are yet to understand its value.
Years later, the three childhood best friends, Ben, Martin, and John (yes, the three members of the Please Don’t Destroy are playing characters named after themselves) are all working minimum-wage jobs in the outdoor big box store Trout Plus. The only reason these overgrown children still have jobs is because Ben’s dad (played by Conan O’Brien) owns the place.
Ben’s dream is to take over his dad’s store, but the older man (rightfully) considers his son a moron, while Martin has just found a new girlfriend who wants to buy a house with him. This leaves poor John feeling a bit left out as his two best buds have mild ambitions outside of their friendship.
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By mild ambitions, I mean Martin wants to stop getting black-out drunk and turning into a violent criminal, while Ben is thinking of opening a hair salon for little boys.
After John does some research on the infamous Foggy Mountain treasure, he talks Ben and Martin into joining him on the quest. Throughout their journey, the three meet two ambitious park rangers, a strange forest cult, a hawk, and even a bad CGI hairless bear that looks like something out of an early 2000s video game.
Every time you think the film reached its peak stupidity, it just goes ahead and does something even worse. The three protagonists don’t have a brain cell between them, and none of them act like humans would. We get a lot of screaming, bizarre dialogue, and a never-ending slew of unfunny jokes.
Please don’t waste your time
The three members of the Please Don’t Destroy troupe portray versions of the caricatures they play in their digital SNL sketches. As a group, the three are entertaining in very small doses, but watching the characters for just over 90 minutes felt like a neverending chore.
Please Don’t Destroy: The Legend of Foggy Mountain is not great. There’s no charm, no real humor, and the character antics are more annoying than amusing. However, if you are a (huge) fan of SNL-type sketches, you might find this film endearing.
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