Don't listen to the negative reviews

Beautiful, moving film.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Male nudity (hey, there's no gratuitous female nudity for once!), bondage, sex toys, guns, mental institutions, drugs, transvestites, insanity, catatonia, and crime are topics you don't want to see, don't watch it. And you're probably not going to show it to your kids.The lighting is a bit questionable, but the acting is not! I find this one of the funniest movies I've seen in a long time. It is black humour at very high level. Clearly many rank it very low. I bought the DVD as a remainder when Blockbuster went bankrupt. Every time I watch it, I love it!

Not only is this film disgusting, offensive and vulgar, but it's also just plain dumb. I mean c'mon, isn't a naked nerd getting called a pedophile and chased by an equally pedophilic clown just a little bit juvenile? I don't mean to sound like a prude or a snob, but penis jokes and sex jokes stopped being funny when I was in the ninth grade. Mental hospitals and lazy stereotypes of the many patients within one just aren't funny to me. Neither is a man having a sexual fetish for paralyzed and disabled people. Have I missed something here? The one and only scene I really enjoyed in this film was the one where a psychologist and a patient have an air hockey match and the orderlies are placing bets. Julian Richings is an excellent actor, I don't know why on earth he'd sign up to be in a film like this one. With its Troma style, its lame jokes and its cheap digital footage that looks like Toronto stock footage shots, 'You Might As Well Live' is I think one of the worst things I've seen in quite some time.

Really great Canadian films are hard to find. They're so thinly spread that most get lost or eclipsed by the sea of American output. On the same token, truly solid, 'funny from beginning to end' comedies are just as rare, at least for my specifically demented taste, ad mark my words, you've got to have one sick puppy of a sense of humour to appreciate You Might As Well Live, a comedy so dark it feels like it has origins in some obscure back alley improv skit fashioned by the strangest people in the class. If that sounds like a glowing compliment fpr a film to get, then keep reading, this may just be the animal for you (I'm looking at all of you YLYL's lurking my feed). This one plays like a mix of John Waters and MadTV on crack. It concerns a childlike loser named Robert R. Mutt (Josh Peace), a hapless schmuck who never seems to be able to do anything right. His childhood idol, major league baseball star Clinton Manitoba (Michael Madsen, riotous) appears to him, claiming he needs three things to succeed in life: A girl, some money and a championship ring. And so he sets out on a deranged quest in his scuzzy rural town, beset by all kinds of drug dealers, vagrants, oddballs and deviants, including rabid Fred Steinke (a maniacal Stephen Mchattie) who aims to have Robert chemically castrated. It's seriously off the map, queasy humour that hits some notes so off key that laughs turn sour upon leaving you as you realize you shouldn't find it funny. But hell, I did. So if you're down, give it a go, and remember: Robert R. Mutt is NOT A douchebag!!

Too many Napoleon Dynamite references might get tired talking about this movie, but if you can picture a sequel written & directed by John Waters in which Napoleon is now 32, suicidally depressed, and falsely accused of pedophilia (but, in a funny way) before being chased full-frontal naked through town by an angry mob, that's how awesome-tastic this movie is. And that's just the first 10 minutes! It's not a perfect 10; it achieves high on spectacle and average on truth. But wow... finally, a bunch of filmmakers who think life in Canada is cool and awful and funny and sucks just the same as it does everywhere else in the world, and who think Canadians are just as horrible and kind and despicable and silly as everybody else in the world.SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILERSpeaking critically, it swaps tones cavalierly, and the easier jokes cut down the bite and sting of the much darker and fantastically awesomer comedy about Robert, a depressed loner groping blindly without any aid or support to overcome his confusion regarding his childhood sexual abuse at the hands (and mouth, probably) of his Cub Scout troop leader and next door neighbor, the odious, resolute, and sexually compelled Mr. Steinke. The topic is never explicitly addressed (or maybe "implicitly expressed"?), but that's my read on it, and I think the screenplay has more than enough moments of proof to point out. My interpretation: Robert is a gentleman and gentle man who's (whose?) life has been ruined because he had the great misfortune to be born next-door to Mr. Steinke. How could innocent little Robert have ever known that running through the lawn sprinkler would entice and seduce this trusted adult? Answer: HE COULDN'T HAVE! He's innocent and has done nothing wrong to deserve this bogeyman in his subconscious! Too gentle to be angry about the situation, Robert wrestles over and over to straighten out his life, but is constantly unsuccessful until the stronger, tougher, and more experienced Dixie, having been enchanted by Robert's innocence, kindness, and gallantry towards others, rushes in to save the day and pistol-whip the cuss out of the barbarian monster ravaging Robert's metaphorical countryside.I wanted to title this post "The Funniest Movie About Childhood Sexual Abuse Ever Made", but I don't want to spoil people's pleasure in making up their own interpretation of this dark and sweet story and character. Check it out!Ciao,Jason Holborn