‘Tusk’

“Tusk” is not so much a movie as it is a companion piece to “Smodcast,” a podcast created by writer/director Kevin Smith (“Clerks,” “Chasing Amy”) and his producer and longtime friend Scott Mosier. The two of them met in their twenties, shared a love for filmmaking, scraped together $27,000 and made their first movie, “Clerks.”

20 years later, Smith has essentially moved on from filmmaking and waded more into podcasting, an outlet that perfectly suits his verbose tendencies and relentlessly graphic, pop culture-laced humor. The podcast also has spawned an endless stream of entertainment and creativity, including the root idea of Smith’s latest film, “Tusk,” which blossomed from a personal ad, of all things, that a listener discovered and sent in for the “Smodcasters” enjoyment and dissection.

The plot of “Tusk” sums up the content of the personal ad. Wallace Bryton (Justin Long) is a podcaster (!) whose shtick is to travel around the country, meet strange or unusual people and report their stories back to his co-host, Teddy (Haley Joel Osment). When an arranged meeting in Canada with an internet sensation falls through, Wallace ends up discovering a letter on a bulletin board in a bar bathroom.

It starts: “Hello. I am an old man who has enjoyed a long and storied life. And after eons of oceanic adventure, I know I do not wish to spend my remaining years alone while I have some stories to share… “

Wallace is intrigued, and so for the sake of the podcast travels far off the grid to meet the writer of the letter, an old, wheelchair-bound man named Howard Howe (Michael Parks). It doesn’t take long for Wallace to realize that something isn’t quite right with Howe, and by the time he figures this out for sure, Wallace blacks out from poisoned tea, courtesy of Howe himself, one of the strangest and most memorable (albeit undeveloped) movie villains in recent years.

That Howe remains in my memory is a tribute the great Michael Parks, an actor who, even when given silly, shallow material such as this, still manages to go all the way with his character. In this case, his character is a man who is physically, emotionally and psychologically obsessed (too tame a word) with walruses due to being saved by one once when he was lost at sea. His solution to this yearning is to turn Wallace into a walrus.

Yes… you read that correctly.

I will go no further with that, for with “Tusk,” Smith unfolds for us a truly strange tragedy of madness and obsession that falters constantly but, for a fan of Smodcast such as myself, also pays off in spades. It is for that reason that I cannot quite recommend “Tusk” to a wider audience, because although I enjoyed it the first, second and third time I watched it, it’s simply not made for everyone; it exists for the listeners of “Smodcast.”

“Tusk” is wildly uneven, often breaking its own established tone apart before reassembling it again in a completely different way, and then repeating — much the same way Howe treats Wallace in the movie. There is a parallel plot to Wallace’s plight, involving his girlfriend Ally (Genesis Rodriguez) and his buddy Teddy joining forces with a rogue French-Canadian detective named Guy LaPointe (disingenuously and hilariously credited as himself at the end… it’s an A-list actor who actually gives an excellent performance, who everyone will recognize despite the wig and prosthetic nose).

This stuff almost feels like it belongs in another movie, and highlights the overall stitched-together feel of “Tusk.” I laughed at lot, and became appropriately unsettled at Howard Howe’s Walrus monster-formerly-known-as-Wallace. But the movie is too self-referential and uneven for me to say, “go out and see it!” I will, however, recommend “Smodcast” to anyone who doesn’t mind some explicit language and pop-culture buffoonery. There is a certain genius to that podcast that doesn’t quite translate here. Neither are for everyone, but if you enjoy the podcast, odds are you’ll have something to appreciate about “Tusk,” just like I do. I’d say start there, then decide whether you want to take this bizarre journey.

★★1/2 (out of four)