A bizarre mystery, a colorful French village, and an unforgettable collection of eccentric characters come together in Marcus Nash’s Bigfoot, I Love You. This delightfully offbeat comedy delivers big laughs, unexpected twists, and enough charm to make it a potential cult classic.
by Nav Qateel
Bigfoot, I Love You is the new hilarious comedy from actor-director Marcus Nash, best known for playing a young Jean-Luc Picard in the hugely successful Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Written and directed by Nash, the movie has future cult classic potential thanks to an eclectic cast of silly, lovable characters and a crazy story that’s about as original as you can get.
Bigfoot, I Love You opens in 2013 in a forest in Normandy, France, where a hunter is going after a man who’s distracting something by making noises. After the man is murdered by the hunter (played menacingly by Bertrand-Xavier Corbi), we jump ahead ten years to Los Angeles, where we meet the main character, Zadie, played by Nikko Austen Smith, who’s dancing away and having fun.
It turns out that Zadie is the daughter of the murdered man, and she’s into theater.
Her wacky uncle Shizzle (Ryan McAllister) has a dream/flashback in which he’s in that very same forest in Normandy, where something unseen with a very deep, growling voice starts to communicate with him.
At one point, Shizzle asks, “Is that you, Biggie?” delivering one of the funniest lines in the movie. I was waiting for a Tupac joke, but I’d have to make do with non-hip-hop humor, of which there was plenty.
Zadie and her friend Kaya, a German who’s not shy about being so direct that he regularly upsets people, are digging around in Zadie’s father’s old belongings when they find an old phone with evidence of Bigfoot possibly being real. This is why her father was in France in the first place.
It turns out that Shizzle needs to get Zadie to Normandy, for reasons that are eventually revealed, so Kaya (Alan Starzinski) and Zadie hop on a private Shizzle jet and arrive in France, where they meet some wonderful, colorful characters.
The small French village where the pair make their home for a few days is picture-perfect and divided into two factions thanks to two feuding sisters. They are unique, for lack of a better word, and I think they might actually be sisters in real life, as they share the same last name according to the end credits.
I really don’t want to spoil anything by describing their quirks, but every single person in this film has something that stands out, demonstrating that Nash put a huge amount of effort into bringing his characters to life.
From the English pub owner (very common in rural France) to the wannabe rapper who can’t rap or beatbox, we meet a mixture of people who almost deserve their own movies. That’s how well-written and likable each of them is.
The village setting is something rarely seen in a movie of this scale, and exactly how Nash pulled it off is beyond me. It appears as though the entire village was involved in the process. Imagine trying to get something like that done in California today?
The title of the movie offers an idea of what the film is about, and if you watch the trailer, you’ll learn more. But I went in blind and loved everything about Bigfoot, I Love You. It’s beautifully shot, the humor hits, and the writing is top-tier.
Nash’s direction keeps the story flowing, with zero padding anywhere in the film. I plan on watching this again, but this time I can relax without taking notes. This is an audience-pleaser and a must-see.
Nav’s Score: 9/10
