Something of a step back for the franchise; ‘Evil Bong 3: The Wrath of Bong’ feels like a movie that had one goal ‘Come in under budget by any means necessary’ Because, MAN OH MAN does this thing feel cheap.

Picking up a year or two after the events of ‘Evil Bong 2’ the gang have all grown up and moved on with their lives, with 2 of our comedy stoners (the jock stoner and the hardcore stoner) going into the legal weed industry together by starting a business, while 90s stoner guy becomes an off grid hippy and our nerdy nerdlinger has started working for the science core of the government. When a meteor crashes on earth containing an alien species thats shaped like a bong, our nerd is sent to investigate.

Little does he know that the bong itself has been captured by a local homeless person who’s sold it to the stoner guys weed business…and little do THEY know, that the alien Bong is actually sentient and working on a plan to destroy the earth…with SPOOGE!.. *Sigh* cue about an hour of the dumbest humour and bottom of the barrel gags imaginable.

In a way its kind of weird that this is even an ‘Evil Bong’ movie, because the titula ‘Evil Bong’ doesnt actually turn up till about halfway through the second act, and for the vast VAST majority of the movie, she’s basically there to help our guys defeat the Alien Bong. Which is ESPECIALLY odd when you consider that we’re now 3 films deep in the ‘Evil Bong’ franchise and so far the ‘Evil Bongs’ been on the good guys side twice and only really worked against them once…Soooooo she’s the ‘Not so Evil Bong’ right now…

Across the board everything in this film feels like some kind of part regression. On the scripting side of things, ‘Evil Bong 2’ wasnt exactly a work of art, but it was a film that was self aware of what it was and cut its cloth appropriately, the tone was stupid, but had a level of sincerity, the characters felt like a breakout from there stereotypical roles in the first Evil Bong movie, it felt like they’d actually grown as characters and could continue to develop as the the series went on. It kept a good pace and I felt quite happy with it as a very basic work that was just trying to have some fun.

‘Evil Bong 3’ jumps the shark, dumbing the plot and characters down TOO much to the point that the sincere intentions found in the 2nd film really arnt there for this one. This almost feels like someone wrote the film with some kind of grudge after being told the characters were ‘too complex’ in the last entry. All of them lose their range here, the levels of stupidity are taken out of the equation, and we’re left with a cast of characters that arnt *quite* as one dimensional as they were in the first film, but are CHRONICALLY aiming to do the stupidest dumbest thing possible in almost every scene. to an almost painful degree.

Stupid humour can be really funny, I like stupid humour when its done well…this? is not done well (in my opinion). Scenes drag on and on, the pacing is a crawl past the first 10 minutes and never changes up the tone or action for the entire runtime. Its basically a load of guys chatting and being dumb in a weed store for 40 minutes married up to 40 minutes of those same guys in a sci-fi space void being molested by alien women acting stunned, stoned and stupid for ANOTHER 40 minutes…and the film kind of…cuts between the two.

While there are one or two moments in this that are enjoyable enough, the plots so paper thin, lacking any kind of impactful tone or direction to the story, that It really just felt like a time sink with the very rare light chuckle thrown in.

Add to this that the cine and direction have taken a bit of a dive too. the film has 2 sets and a couple scenes shot on location, and thats. IT. the location work seems almost shot on handheld in a rush and looks unprofessional. the studio work is passable, but would give some poverty row features a run for their money. I dont know what happened on the shoot for this movie, but the vibe it gives off is ‘Theres no money to do anything other than film the damn thing, we get 2 takes max per scene, we cant afford B-roll’

They utilise composite CG and animation for the titles and transition cards in this one, but they look horrendously cheap as of 2023. The kind of thing that could easily be knocked together in photoshop these days by an amateur in under 10 minutes. The thing lacks any kind of distinctive creative vision beyond neon body paint and references to the ‘Creepshow’ short: “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill”

Even the physical effects arnt up to snuff. We’re 3 films into the ‘Evil Bong’ series by this point and they STILL havent got a ‘Bong’ puppet that has fully animated facial features. ‘Ebee’s mouth twitches when she talks…which is terrible, but shamefully the BEST this series has managed to date, her eyes still dont move, and the Alien Bong’s in a similar situation, all the alien props look like they were bought at party city or were designed last minute…this is a professional retail production. And it feels like it was made by students as an ‘End of year’ film school offering.

Performances are a bit mixed, Our nerdy dork Alistair has been replaced in this movie by Peter Sickles, who does a fine enough job. Honestly I didnt actually notice the actor change until the film brought it up itself! the core cast trundle along about fine enough. But the material they have to work with, and the total lack of any kind of interesting set space (literally a park, a weed shop and a neon lit black void is all the sets in this film…) means there isnt really a whole lot they can do. I didnt dislike any of the performances in this one. They were all kind of pleasent enough and, for the most part, they manage to maintain their character tones from the 2nd film. Which is nice. I just wish the scripts had given them more to do and the director had had more time and budget to help get the best out of them.

And finally; the soundtrack…which is basically the same score as the first two films with 1 or 2 new tracks thrown into the mix especially for the 3rd outing…they’re okay. Im still really glad we arnt getting generic ‘full moon’ scoring on these things…but we are now at the point where. For the 4th film, I really do hope they go for a majority new soundtrack.

All in all? This thing falls between two chairs, more interesting and less irritating than the first ‘Evil Bong’ but WAY more dumbed down, budget starved and less interesting than ‘Evil Bong 2’ Not an essential watch, not recommended. The only thing I can say is, if like me, if you enjoyed the 2nd ‘Evil Bong’ film as the kind of movie you can just shove on in the background while your doing other things and occasionally have a little chuckle over it. This is basically more of the same, but stupid. So…and worse for it.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/evil-bong-3-the-wrath-of-bong/