An anarchic tale of battling brothers and a scout troop gone bad, Nature Calls could have been this generation's Bad News Bears. Unfortunately, thanks to an inconsistent script and messy direction, the film ends up being far less than the sum of its parts; a disappointing endeavour for all involved, made watchable thanks to a couple of inspired supporting performances.
Patton Oswalt plays Randy Stevens, an Assistant Scoutmaster determined to follow in his father's footsteps and honour his legacy by rebuilding one of the greatest scout troops in the country. And his first step on the road to glory is to organise a weekend trip into the woodlands for his boys.
Only trouble is, that same weekend, Randy's brother Kirk (Johnny Knoxville) has organised a 'bring-your-own-TV' slumber party for his newly adopted African son, and invited the entire troop.
The boys opt for the indoor option, though at the last minute Randy secretly appeals to their better nature, and convinces them to hit the camping trail without telling a soul.
What follows is a comedy of errors as Randy endeavours to educate the boys in the ways of the wild, while Kirk hits the road to track the troop down and bring them home.
And that's about it in terms of story, which would be fine if there were more jokes, but this is a comedy where there are more misses than hits on the humour front.
The kids themselves are designed to be endearing in a foul-mouthed kind of way, but more often-than-not they come across as spoilt and obnoxious. Indeed, their interaction with Randy in the forest is some of the weakest material on show here, and yet it fills the bulk of the film's run-time.
More interesting, and certainly much funnier, is Kirk's pursuit of the troop. He's aided and abetted by security guard Gentry and angry father Caldwell, and as played by Rob Riggle and Patrice O'Neal, they steal pretty much every scene they are in.
Riggle is fast becoming the go-to guy for unhinged characters in raunchy comedies, while O'Neal - who tragically died shortly after finishing the film - brings the house down with several of his lines.
Sadly they are the bright spot in an otherwise disappointing venture. Writer-director Todd Rohal - whose previous credits include the similarly offbeat Guatemalan Handshake and Catechism Cataclysm - has pieced Nature Calls together in erratic fashion, the film lacking cohesion and instead randomly lurching from scene-to-scene.
The tone of the piece is also all over the place, the dirty jokes sitting uneasily alongside sappy sentiment and clumsy comments on consumerism and modern masculinity.
And having crafted a film chock-full of caricatures rather than three-dimensional characters, Rohal then expects us to feel something for them in the final few scenes, with very little success.
Oswalt and Knoxville do their best with underwritten characters, but never convince as brothers, and more often-than-not look embarrassed by the childish nature of it all. And that's the film's biggest problem - it appears to be aimed at kids, but the humour is most definitely adult in nature, making for a strange, uncomfortable and deeply disappointing viewing experience.
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