| When the entire movie is one big joke, it’s hard to find any of the actual jokes all that amusing. Bulls is set in the overlapping world of small, struggling bars in small town Indiana and the World Darts Championship. You might be wondering how two bad darts players who own a small bar become professional darts players, but the film didn’t put much thought into it, a guy walks into their bar and then they’re in the championship. | | 2026
Directed by: Daniel Meyer
Screenplay by: Daniel Meyer
Starring: Matt Trudeau, Meir Steinberg
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The entire movie is like that. Things just happen even if there is no logic behind it. Austin (Matt Trudeau) and Hank (Meir Steinberg) are two half-brothers (although we don’t actually learn that until close to the end, even though there is no logical reason to withhold that information) who own a small struggling bar in Michigan City, Indiana. They have two regular customers, Ian, a curmudgeonly guy who just likes complaining, and Virgil, an older unkempt guy who keeps telling fantastical tales like when he was a spy in Berlin or an uncredited producer on Back to the Future. Virgil works well in this movie and is the one consistently funny thing since characters like him don’t need logic. Austin and Hank will also play darts with anybody else who happens to show up, but they always lose.
Then a guy from the World Darts Championship walks into their bar for no reason whatsoever and ask them if they would like to compete in the championship. Of course they say yes, but Austin says yes because they need the money otherwise the bar will go under; apparently, Hank doesn’t know that, but I don’t know how you can tend bar to only two customers and no one else and not realize that you’re in financial trouble.
Austin and Hank then employ Ian to train them in darts and this might actually be the worst part of the movie. The movie so badly just wants to go full-on silliness but at some point there has to be something real in the movie otherwise you’re not watching anything. Ian turns out to be the son of the world’s greatest dart thrower – Michael Shannon. While I can’t blame the producers for using his name and fame to help sell their movie, a point of warning: Michael Shannon is in exactly one scene at the very beginning and has exactly one line. Don’t watch this movie just because Michael Shannon is in it.
I don’t know darts well enough to know if there is any reality to the games in the movie, but there is a decent chance it’s all nonsense. Other viewers are complaining that this is not how you play darts. The defending champions are two brothers from… Scotland? England? Nobody is sure, because the two actors from Indiana are just doing whatever accents they can.
There is exactly one storyline carrying us through the darts plot: Hank is gay and is in love with a guy who owns an antique/thrift shop down the street from his bar. Ultimately the movie is about fighting heteronormativity in the world of professional darts? Weird. Not necessarily bad, but weird. There is a lot of randomness in Bulls, some of it is funny, but there is a distinct lack of logic and reason tying things together.
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