Stream It Or Skip It

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘John Bronco’ on Hulu, A Rollicking Trifle That Blends Nostalgia and Laughs With a Whiff Of SponconĀ 

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John Bronco

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Walton Goggins’ particular, peculiar “Gogginsness” fuels John Bronco (Hulu), a cheeky mockumentary about a quasi-legendary pitchman for the Ford Bronco who rises, falls, rises again, and checks a bunch of nostalgic boxes along the way.

JOHN BRONCO: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: If it’s a little disorienting at first, with its string of spotty, washed out footage of rodeo riders and rustbucket pickups tearing up dust on two-track roads, you’re let in on the joke once the country song on the soundtrack begins the first verse. “He was cut from stone/with unbreakable bones/Diamonds for eyes/And titanium thighsā€¦” yes, it’s John Bronco they’re singing about, an aw shucks roustabout who backed his way into the Baja Off Road Rally, won it, and became the face and voice of the Ford Bronco, new for 1966. Directed by Jake Szymanski (Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates) and featuring Walton Goggins as the titular buck, Bronco is a mockumentary posing as a documentary posing as native advertising for Ford’s real world 2021 relaunch of its iconic Bronco SUV. Bronco wins at Baja, and his pitchman career is born. He makes a string of goofy spots for the sporty little truck, appears on Johnny Carson, and scores a hit single with a broad, Tom Jones-style bump and grind number. Bronco then bops through the touchstones of 1960s, ’70s and ’80s pop culture like a pinball. Cameos from actual pitchmen of the era (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the rapid-fire speech Micro Machines guy) lend a wrinkle of reality to Bronco‘s world building, and Tim Meadows drops by as Bronco’s manager. There’s even a decent bit that incorporates Doug Flutie’s real ads for the Ford Ranger. Meanwhile, throwaway gags about ’80s ephemera ā€” VCRs, new wave, 8-bit video games ā€” help stitch it all together.

JOHN BRONCO MOVIE
Photo: Hulu

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? John Bronco often suggests the opening credits of a lost 1980s prime timer, the kind of network filler that would’ve followed The Fall Guy or Simon & Simon. There’s a hint of Anchorman-style absurdity, too, or the alternate timeline satire of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. (You car culture aficianados might see a glimmer of Framing John DeLorean in here, too.)

Performance Worth Watching: This thing benefits enormously from Goggins being Goggins. Bronco is pretty flimsy beyond the fun it has with sending up the documentary form, playing around with film stock, and sticking in jokes about the ad wizards. But with his rakish grin and flashes of singular weirdness, Goggins manages to make John Bronco the guy more than just an empty silhouette in dirty boots.

Memorable Dialogue: A lot of Goggins’ line reads have a loose, improvised feel. “Why don’t you go back to that fancy-ass country club of yours and let hardworking Americans like me go eat some fudge! How about that?”

Sex and Skin: Well, John Bronco wears a pair of Daisy Dukes…

Our Take: At 40 minutes, John Bronco isn’t quite a movie. But the runtime is sufficient because anything longer and it would feel like a Saturday Night Live digital short that runs out the clock on its single idea. The riffs on 20th century ad culture are fun, and Meadows ekes a few laughs out of his manager character. But there’s plenty of filler, too, and an awkward glance at the cultural legacy of the white Ford Bronco. Walton Goggins is pretty much always enjoyable, and that holds true here — a highlight reel of him delivering loopy taglines like “ā€˜Cause Daddy needs a pony, too” wouldn’t not be enjoyable. But it dawns on you more than once that John Bronco doesn’t really need to exist.

Our Call: SKIP IT. While it has Goggins and moments of visual pizzazz, John Bronco might have been better served as a series of YouTube vignettes. As it is, it’s a not-quite-movie that ultimately leans too much on its true identity as a wink-wink-nod-nod marketing piece.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

Watch John Bronco on Hulu