Lonely Island surprise — a Bash Brothers send-up
‘Visual poem’ has plenty of inside jokes that will hit home in Bay Area
The 30-minute special directed by Akiva Schaffer and Mike Diva is filled with Oakland and East Bay references, with many specific to the 1980s setting.
Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, who met at Willard Middle School in Berkeley, have always talked about their East Bay upbringing in interviews.
But their body of visual work under the name the Lonely Island has often arrived through the lens of New York or Los Angeles, first in their “Saturday Night Live” digital shorts and later in films including the woefully underappreciated “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.”
That streak ends with the surreal, often hilarious and amazingly specific “The Lonely Island Presents: The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience,” a surprise Wednesday midnight release on Netflix.
The steroids-and-fame “visual poem” involving Oakland A’s stars Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire strains and mostly succeeds to place its very narrow subject matter on a much broader canvas. National and international critics will focus, correctly, on the fact that both the nature of the release and the content is a send-up/homage to Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” visual album. But the 30-minute special directed by Schaffer and Mike Diva is so filled with Oakland and East Bay references, with many specific to the 1980s setting, that it entertains on a different level for Bay Area residents.
“Rolling to Hilltop Mall to get a pager,” Schaffer-as-McGwire raps. “Got girls of every flavor, because we’re in the majors.”
Locals got a tease of the visual poem at last year’s Clusterfest comedy festival in San Francisco, when the group performed “Jose & Mark.” It turns out that’s the opening for both the half-hour film and a new 11-track Lonely Island album.
The film tackles — with various levels of seriousness — the nature of fame, daddy issues, dating and sports disappointment. At several points, actual or altered footage of Oakland A’s baseball is included.
And finally, the project deals with the perils of hero worship for sports fans, particularly anyone who had a “Bash Brothers” poster honoring
Canseco and McGwire on their wall. These are the most human moments of the film, when the clear disappointment felt by Samberg, Taccone and Schaffer (they were preteen A’s fans during the peak of McGwire’s and Canseco’s careers) is transferred into a cathartic mockery of the era and its illusions.
After beginning with a steady Rick Rubin-produced Beastie Boys vibe, “The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience” notably takes a plunge (literally, they sink in a pool) into dreamlike Cormac McCarthy/Terrence Malick territory.
“What do we ask of our heroes? Where do we put them when they fall back to earth?” somber narration begins. “How do we find a path back to light, when all is cast in shadow?”
But a return to blunt-force humor, and another inside joke, is never too far away. Among the 11 tracks is a song called “Oakland Nights,” with Sterling K. Brown in a kimono, lip-syncing the vocals by singer Sia in the soul ballad. Lake Merritt, BART and the tony Contra Costa County neighborhood of Blackhawk are referenced.
When Canseco and McGwire’s love of bashing arms goes too far and a teammate’s arm is broken, it’s perfect that the victim is little Walt Weiss. (“Hit a dinger through the f—ing VIP suite glass,” Samberg raps. “Break your f—ing arm in half and sign the cast.”)
Weiss is a figure unknown to most of the world watching “The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience,” but A’s fans will clearly remember his forearm was the most vulnerable to a bash-related injury.
We live in an incredible time in television, when a studio will greenlight a project that seems catered to fans of a baseball team that has the league’s fifth-lowest home attendance in 2018. It’s a wonderful exploration space for the Lonely Island, who have always found humor in laser-focused specificity.
If at any point you lose interest, just think of McGwire watching this, after decades of awkward attempts to repair his reputation. Or check Canseco’s Twitter feed, which is bound to add a performance art element to the release. (Has he challenged Samberg to a fight yet?)
Above all, savor this surprise Lonely Island ode to their Bay Area home, and hope they return again soon.