Meet Pestario "Pest" Vargas (John Leguizamo), a con artist from Miami who is probably the most annoying person anyone will ever meet. When the Scottish mob calls in a $50,000 debt, Pest is stuck trying to quickly come up with the cash.
He is soon thereafter approached by Gustav Shank (Jeffrey Jones), a big game hunter from Germany whose big game of choice is human beings. Looking to add a Latino to his trophy collection, Gustav offers Pest a deal: survive being hunted for 24 hours, and he will be paid 50,000 dollars. Realizing that this would give him the opportunity to get the Scottish mob off his back, Pest agrees, and in that 24-hour period, he has a series of wacky misadventures while trying to stay alive.
There is no denying that The Pest is a very bad movie, but the fact that it's a bad comedy makes it even worse. I don't know what it is about them, but awful movies seem even more awful when they're comedies. Bad comedies are practically intolerable, and The Pest is no exception. It is a complete failure on every possible level. It's such an abysmal waste of time and effort that its mere existence makes me want to weep and then die.
Helming this disaster is Paul Miller, a director I've never heard of and probably never will again. His direction has no life, no spark. It's as if Miller simply couldn't be bothered to even try. Even if he knew his movie was a piece of crap, couldn't he have at least made an attempt to care?
But Miller's work is nowhere near as bad as the writing. The script is credited to David Bar Katz from a story by he and John Leguizamo, and if it were me, I'd have probably used a fake name. Not only is it a cheap ripoff of Richard Connell's 1924 short story "The Most Dangerous Game," but it's just dreadful, period. There is not a single worthwhile moment that I can think of. It's juvenile in the worst way, with jokes that are either not funny or just plain offensive, and a protagonist that is so unlikable that you'll wish you could jump into the movie and punch him. Seriously, by the end of the movie, you'll be cheering for Gustav to finally kill Pest. What idiot thought it was a good idea to have a main character that was so irritating? How are we supposed to sympathize with Pest when you're actually rooting for the Nazi villain to shoot him?
It doesn't help anything that the cast isn't that great either. John Leguizamo plays the title role, and all he did was leave me confused. Leguizamo can be really funny if given the right material, but considering that he helped write this piece of crap, it leaves me wondering just what the hell he was thinking. In all honesty, Leguizamo's performance wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for how poor the script is. With better jokes, he could have made The Pest at least mediocre. But sadly, if the jokes don't work, neither will the person telling them.
The supporting cast doesn't do much to help, but I must confess to liking Jeffrey Jones and Tom McLeister as Gustav and his faithful assistant Leo. They're actually funny in spite of the material they have to work with. But everyone else is forgettable. Edoardo Ballerini is irritating as Gustav's incredibly gay son, while Freddy Rodriguez and Aries Spears, who play Pest's best friends, end up being more annoying than funny. The rest of the cast... meh.
I can sum this review up in six words: "please do not watch The Pest." Really, don't. Do not rent the DVD. If you land on it while channel-surfing, change the channel to something else. If someone says to you, "Hey, let's watch The Pest," slap that person. It's a terrible movie that would be better off forgotten. Of course, this review is only helping perpetuate the movie's presence, but I had to warn people about it. The Pest is a bad movie of the worst kind, its only redeeming factor being that it's not longer. It's an unbearingly frustrating movie that I can only give one star. I'd actually give it something in the negative numbers if my ratings scale went that low. It's that bad.
Final Rating: *
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