RSO [Registered Sex Offender]


Title: RSO [Registered Sex Offender]
Rating: 1.5/5
Genre: Comedy, Documentary (Mockumentary)
Starring: Gabriel McIver, Kristen Tucker, Kevin Corrigan
Director: Bob Byington

It didn't take long for this to intrigue me; a mockumentary about the hazards of living in southern state (Texas to be specific) on the Registered Sex Offenders list, through the various forms of therapy he is required to undergo in order to correct his habitual tendency to take his sexual innuendo's too far and use in inappropriate situations, the community service he is required to undergo as well as his lacklustre quest for work. Shot entirely using a handheld camera and featuring no actors of note, this is the only way to truly proceed with such a film (any recognisable faces or expansive camera work easily capable of detracting from the sense of realism strived for) so there is no real complaints on this front, instead its major flaw is actually in the comedy itself. Which is as you might expect, a pretty major flaw.

The wit is unbelievably dry and deadpan. In fact its so void of any comical moisture that it feels like someone left the jokes in the desert before rubbing it down with sandpaper for good measure, and this might not be such a problem if it wasn't for the fact they're so awful that it doesn't even evoke a pity laugh, just the sheer sense of dread that you're one step away from having tumble weed roll on past. My expectations of some form of intelligent humour derived from his situation is replaced by a constant stream of bad sex puns that I stopped finding amusing before I hit puberty; the kind that only 'The Todd' from Scrubs could find amusing and after over an hour of them you start wondering when its to end.

Between the occasional scene of him hitting on anyone in sight (badly) – whether they're the teenager in the petrol station or the woman of her 50s leading an aerobics class – the many sessions of group therapy where he whines that his younger girlfriend isn't having sex with him (apparently that's the source of all his issues, and not his sex addiction) and his completely nonchalant attitude towards everything and anything that doesn't involve whacking off to porn, we learn that he is not simply 'normal' in that naturalistic sense of a character not made out to be the anti-hero, but he's a misogynistic and argumentative annoyance that is thoroughly impossible to like, and as a result we simply don't care. This review is more here to warn than to recommend; unless you like guffawing because someone made a cock joke and have difficulty following anything more intelligent than your average porno theres odds you won't like this. And no, there are no tits on display at all, so if you saw the picture of Kristen Tucker and thought it might be worth it for that, its not.

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