If you’re wondering if The Shipment is a movie you would find humorous, simply answer this one question: does the idea of a mafia-hired Mexican transporting a shipment of Viagra across the border, by storing it “within” a group of cows, sound funny to you? If it does, you might find yourself laughing rather often. If it doesn’t, you could probably find a much better way to spend your 88 minutes. Using the premise of “cowboys versus wise guys”, The Shipment gets most of its humour from ethnic jokes and half-hearted slapstick, to create a kind of comedy you either get or you don’t.
Paul Rodriguez plays the shady criminal driving the Viagra across the border. As soon as he picks up the shipment, the two mafia men who hired him are killed in a shoot-out. Our hapless hero takes off with the loot and heads toward Paradise, Arizona, ultimately getting caught between the mafia and the good ole boys in Paradise. What ensues is a constant barrage of jokes poking fun at hicks and Italians, with, of course, a few left over for the cow’s buttocks. The characters play up their stereotypes, making them easy targets for jokes, but they are good for nothing but the comedy.
When the action moves to Paradise, we run into a unique group consisting of a laidback sheriff (Matthew Modine), a good-hearted deputy, and a local yokel always finding himself in some sort of trouble. Once the insanity begins in Paradise, the movie’s plot really begins to go off track. Characters are brought together through ludicrous connections that are so unbelievable, it makes it difficult to laugh at the few jokes that are funny. The culture clash between the Italians and cowboys only remains funny for so long, and once the jokes exhaust themselves, there is only a paper-thin plot to fall back on.
The Shipment could be placed in the same category of lowbrow humour that includes Tom Green and Rob Schneider movies – the kind of comedies that consist of a few jokes stretched into a feature-length film. As the ethnic jokes become tiresome and the plot more outlandish and ridiculous, the characters become less amusing and more annoying. This is a film that tries hard to be funny but ultimately becomes anything but that. Its wackiness is grating rather than endearing and even during the short running time, I lost my patience several times with the juvenile humour that would cause so few viewers to even chuckle.
Characters are brought together through ludicrous connections that are so unbelievable, it makes it difficult to laugh at the few jokes that are funny.
