That's a damn fine poster you've got there, Killing Gunther. Unfortunately, it's also indicative of Killing Gunther's biggest problem: Leading the promotional material with Arnold Schwarzenegger. I know, from a marketing standpoint, it makes a hundred and five percent sense, totally get it. But purely in terms of the experience you go through from watching a movie, I feel absolutely certain that Killing Gunther would have been exponentially better if Arnie's involvement was kept secret. It seems very much as if the movie was built that way, and then the direction was changed some time after post-production.
In the end, Killing Gunther is an okay movie, but it might have been **great** if the Gunther character was a genuine reveal in the film, instead of the "Fuckin' finally" moment we ended up with.
Final rating:★★½ - Had a lot that appealed to me, didn’t quite work as a whole.
Infuriatingly bad watch, probably won't watch again, and can't recommend.
It's like someone wanted "Barry" and "The Office" to be the same thing, but they couldn't get a name big enough except for Arnold Schwarzenegger who looks awesome in this, so why wouldn't he take the pay check.
And I like almost everyone in this movie, Arnold included, they're really funny people, and I bet this movie was a blast to make. However, this movie is a fine example of what NOT to do for found footage, and why making a "fake-umentary" is so hard to do correctly.
Unfortunately, these comedy actors are mostly sketch artists (SNL) or they work parts on sitcoms, Hannah Simone was the "best friend" on "New Girl", but other than Taran Killam (arguably), they haven't carried a show before, and I don't think they realized that making a movie isn't the same as making episodes.
I would love to see all these people back together in a good movie, but the writing in this movie is heavily dependent on weak characters with soft motivations, and a lot, A LOT, of attention seeking humor (basically the movie demands you watch it, "Look at me dad! Dad! YOU'RE NOT LOOKING!"), or situational humor, which takes a LOT of work to either set up or explain.
I was really looking forward to this one, which might be why I'm being so critical, because it is a GREAT premise, but they didn't take writing the script seriously because it's a comedy so they loss some of the "oomph" and draw it should have had. And there are few physics breaking things that I wouldn't have cared about so much, but the rest of the movie was grating at me that it didn't care, so I shouldn't care.
I'm not mad in the end, I'm just disappointed.
