Minghags...

I've always liked Haggard - Bam Margera's first foray into fiction-based filmmaking - and so it was about bloody time he got around to doing another one, rather than so much of this MTV japery.

The problem however, with Margera's style of fictional filmmaking, is that it all ends up being a bunch of ideas tied together somewhat loosely, often involving so many in-jokes you have to be a Margera-follower to get a good amount of laugh-time out of it.

Haggard though, when compared to Minghags, certainly had a much tighter narrative through-line to guide us through the silliness and bum-based crudeness (even if it was all a bit melodramatic and over-acted when it got down to the nitty-gritty).

Minghags on the other hand, has a story running throughout, but quite often it meanders off into numerous alleys that ultimately end up unexplored to enough extent. It ricochets from one in-joke to another, one wild idea to the next. As a result it all feels a bit cluttered and scattershot.

Somewhat annoyingly, the Margera/Frantz visual style hasn't really developed either. Constant wobbling around rather than any attempt to gain consistent coverage, scattered use of the distracting fish-eye lens and over-use of fast-motion (although not quite as much as Haggard, which used it as excessively as a kid with a new, exciting toy), to name a few things.

There needs to be a bit more organisational effort put into a film to really make it hang together ... some tighter writing would really sort this out, and when done right can still include all the daft ideas to make your heart content.

Enough of the criticism though. Ultimately I did enjoy Minghags - and this was during a rather dribbly, shivery time in a rather violent outburst of post-New Year illness. No doubt upon second viewing, I'll like it more without the distraction of an aching nasal cavity, of sore teeth, of a bunged up hooter, of watery eyes and a dry mouth.

Mind you, this film probably works best with the employ of booze and some mates to watch it with (and probably something else, for those of you so inclined).

And it is good to see Margera looking (albeit briefly) outside of his usual circle of family and friends to find actors ... although like I said, this is brief. The majority of the film is a veritable who's who of the Margera universe ... which also goes for locations - however, that said, thankfully we don't see a huge amount of familiar settings (it was a bit much in Haggard to be honest, to see the same locations we'd seen plenty of already). And even though there is joy to be had from the likes of Pop-Pop, Mark the Bagger and Boof, the stuttery editing down of their 'one line at a time' coached performances does prove somewhat distracting after a while.

Hopefully with his next fictional outing, he'll seek to address some of these niggles ... to make something a bit more consistent, a bit more organised, a bit more polished and detailed - while importantly keeping all the infectious silliness that makes his stuff worth watching in the first place, which is certainly found in abundance in Minghags.