Three friends will go to “Hell and Back” to bring some life back to a failing amusement park. Remy (Nick Swardson), Augie (TJ Miller) and Curt (Rob Riggle) have been best friends since birth. They work at an attraction park that has clearly seen better days. To increase sales, they jokingly take a blood oath and break it, and as a result Curt is dragged to Hell to be sacrificed. The guys must risk everything to save their friend from a slew of misfit demons, Greek legends, and the Devil himself. “Hell and Back” is receiving a limited theater run, and after seeing it, i can clearly understand why this film’s following is a very acquired taste. I was in the theater with one other person, and she left twenty minutes into the film. This should tell you everything that you need to know about this one. While the film’s greatest strengths come in it’s R-rated comedy, the same humor that entices it’s adult audiences, will also be the ones it betrays. There were a couple of scenes that made me laugh, and that centers around the scene being more creative with it’s religious characters and less creative with it’s crude dialogue that feels distracting to the ongoing plot. That plot by itself feels very limited, and a lot of that has to do with this film being from the producers of the television show, “Robot Chicken”. A show that is good in it’s delivery…fifteen minutes at a time. If this were an episode of that show, the film would be a success, but it’s thin plot relies too much on these amped up charicatures slowing down the momentum so they can make a sex or fart joke. By the time you get to the final act of the film, you will be begging for the credits due to hearing the same joke repeated quite often. It’s kind of amazing that a film with a mere 74 minute run time can feel like it’s moving at a snail’s pace, and all of that is a result of those distractions that i mentioned. I want to talk about the design and animation of the film because it’s one of the only things i took to positive note. “Paranorman” has been one of my favorite animated films of the last decade, and the animation in this film looks right on par with that one. Most of the film takes place in Hell, so there was no limits on how far they could take the designs of some truly gruesome creatures. Due to the freedom in it’s rating, this film doesn’t feel handicapped with how dark it can make that particular setting. Where the film hurt in the voice work atmosphere was a few of the miscastings even within it’s own cast of well knowns. I don’t have any particular problems with the actors cast for this film, more so in the roles they were cast as. Swardson is OK, but he never comes off as that brave man who stands up for his friends. His voicework makes him seem like the most uninterested coward, so it makes it hard to follow and support him through these truly uphill battles that these characters face. I would’ve rather had him cast as one of the Devil’s minions and made TJ Miller the main protagonist. Miller has done excellent voicework in “How to Train Your Dragon”, so he is well versed in what it takes vocally to springboard a film because of it’s main character. There were a couple of other problems that i had with the casting, and maybe you the reader will see them if you see this film. Overall, “Hell and Back” feels and sounds like a trip taken by it’s audience. It’s brief, crude, and thin in plot. Something like this feels much better on a format like Netflix.

4/10