Jay Chandrasekhar Kevin Heffernan Todd Gilchrist France film fun social death audience information Assurant Jay Chandrasekhar Kevin Heffernan Todd Gilchrist France

‘Quasi’ Review: Broken Lizard’s Hunchback Comedy Avoids Some Cheap Jokes But Also Lacks Good Ones

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variety.com

Todd Gilchrist editor Not to be confused with an adaptation of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” comedy troupe Broken Lizard’s “Quasi” tells a story that’s truer to the Oxford definition of its title than the 1831 Victor Hugo novel that inspired it.

Kevin Heffernan settles uneasily into the director’s seat usually occupied by colleague Jay Chandrasekhar for an underdog story more interested in leveraging funny pronunciations of French words for underwhelming laughs than in creating real characters — much less a visual backdrop that doesn’t look like a second-rate Renaissance Faire.Set in a 13th Century France that narrator and sometime Broken Lizard collaborator Brian Cox helpfully informs us “sucked,” the film centers on Quasimodo (Steve Lemme), a social outcast who works in the torture chambers of King Guy (Chandrasekhar).

There, in a search for a cure to his own physical deformity, he develops the hottest, most pain-inducing device on the market, “the rack.” Quasi’s upbeat friend Duchamp (Heffernan) tries to cheer him up by offering one of his Papal Lottery tickets — and the amateur torturer wins, earning an audience with Pope Cornelius (Paul Soter).

Ahead of that meeting, Guy instructs Quasi to assassinate Cornelius, who the king assures him is a danger to France and “a total asshole.” He also meets Catherine (Adrianne Palicki), Guy’s thoughtful new queen, who develops an unexpected affection for the disfigured peasant after he rallies his fellow torturers for a protest about oysters.When he finally meets the pope, Quasi receives conflicting orders: Kill Guy instead.

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