The joke is literally in the title of writer/director Todd Rohal’s X-rated gross-out exploitation comedy, Fuck My Son! Described as a throwback to the films of John Waters (and arguably featuring a healthy dollop of Troma), the film purposefully sets out to offend, disrupt, and transgress the boundaries of good taste – although the results will likely depend on the audience’s willingness to tolerate a few jokes drawn out over 94 minutes.
The adaptation of Johnny Ryan’s comic of the same name starts off well with a fake movie theatre pre-show. Host Dagney Milstead (Elizabeth Maxwell) proudly goes over the film’s rating while introducing a pair of novelty glasses that allows the audience to cater their individual viewing experience by selecting one of two perspectives: Perv-O-Vision or Nude Blok.
In the former, lecherous viewers can see all of the nudity and gore that the film offers (which is a reasonable amount and, for the nudity, refreshingly features both sexes). Should the Nude Blok option be selected, sensitive viewers simply recite a prayer and use the glasses to obscure the offensive content.
These two approaches are then demonstrated with a sample video featuring a man and a woman dancing nude. The joke is, of course, that when the Nude Blok side of the glasses are tested, the dangly bits remain completely visible in close-up, along with an asterisk/disclaimer encouraging audiences to notify ushers if their glasses aren’t working.
It’s clever, funny, and a little bit saucy, which bodes well for the feature to come. Alas, this is by far Fuck My Son‘s most successful joke.
What follows is a very simple, desperate to offend narrative. An old woman, Vermina (Robert Longstreet in drag, though the character identifies as female) abducts a single mother, Sandi (a very game Tipper Newton) and her young daughter Bernice (Kynzie Colmery) in a stranger danger van situation. Vermina brings the pair back to her isolated farmhouse and delivers an ultimatum to Sandi: fuck her mutant son, Fabian (Steve Little) – complete with warts, boils, buck teeth and fat (rubber) body (suit) – or Bernice will be hurt.
That’s essentially it; that’s the film. Naturally there’s some back and forth between the women, and a few other narrative developments, but the crux of the film (and its too often-repeated joke) is that Sandi must fuck Vermina’s son.
Naturally the film is (purposefully) filled with tasteless, gross-out humour and, in very specific instances, it works. Consider this escalation: when Sandi must finally fuck Fabian, she removes his dirty diaper, but instead of a penis, all she finds is a hole. After being instructed by Vermina to dig around, Sandi reaches in (wrist deep) and pulls out…a hot dog. After confirmation that that’s not the penis she’s looking for, Sandi goes back in and emerges with…a handful of bugs. According to the comedy rule of three, the abducted woman finally succeeds on the third try and, of course, the dick in question is horrendous and disgusting and requires new humiliating, gross, and offensive actions in order to fuck.
If you’re a fan of spit/vomit/ejaculate/fart/burp humor, then on paper, Fuck My Son! is a film for you. One of the film’s big problems, however, is that Rohal is unwilling to execute the joke in a timely fashion and move on to the next. Did you laugh the first time Fabian burps in Sandi’s face? Excellent – because he’ll do it approximately five or six more times in the span of the next few minutes. It’s the same joke, ad nauseam and the hit/miss ratio is not good.
Case in point: a “Three Blind Tenors” joke which conflates opera trio the Three Tenors and blind opera singer Andrea Bocelli. This is a weird (unfunny) deep cut the first time it appears, but it never becomes funnier, despite the film repeatedly revisiting it. This is a recurring problem.
The other issue is that Rohal’s film is desperate to offend. Unlike the aforementioned Troma or Waters films, which feel effortlessly irreverent and tasteless, Fuck My Son! is working overtime to be edgy and transgressive; every tasteless (but also oddly predictable and often self-satisfied) joke feels like a film desperately trying to secure its reputation as a future midnight cult film.
It should be acknowledged that a lot of the film’s outrageous content is driven by its source material. The comic has the same story and many of the same plot beats, as evidenced by several panels that appear during the credits. The difference is how this content plays in a live-action vehicle; Fuck My Son! never manages to strike a balance between its various tones. The X-rated exploitation vibe of the premise clashes with the film’s moments of cartoonish zaniness, as well as its nods to horror titles like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And then there’s the animated children’s show-within-the-film featuring a cartoon family of meat products that look extremely janky, but the film finds very amusing.
Taken in isolation, some of these sequences are good for a chuckle. But the film is frustratingly repetitive, particularly in the saggy back half when it is too content to rely on rape jokes and simply screaming its own title for comedic effect. By the time Fuck My Son! reaches the first of its two drawn-out endings (denoted by separate title cards), the film might as well be torturing us alongside Sandi.
Fuck My Son! had its world premiere at TIFF 2025. Rohal is on record that the film will be limited to a theatrical-only experience for the immediate future.
The post ‘Fuck My Son!’ TIFF Review – X-Rated Exploitation Comedy Is Desperate to Offend appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
