Standing on the Shoulders of Kitties: The Bubbles and the Shitrockers Story review – goofs on tour

Trailer Park Boys is a long-running, multiplatform Canadian sitcom that non-Canadians with a taste for bawdy comedy may know if they’ve let Netflix’s algorithm churn up deep catalogue cuts in the middle of the night. For everyone else, bemused but not entirely unamused with this latest product, the basic setup is that this film is a mockumentary supposedly being filmed by a Dutch crew, and starts out in a trailer park in Nova Scotia in the company of various eccentric working-class chaps, some of whom are ex-convicts.

In this feature-length offering, salty but sweet Bubbles (Mike Smith, also the film’s screenwriter) and his unfeasibly thick-lensed spectacles decides singing country songs for retirement-home residents isn’t enough of a career. With a bit of pluck, gumption and the power of montage, he soon assembles a beat combo he colourfully dubs Bubbles and the Shitrockers, a motley crew willing to go along with his passion for songs about whores, convicts and cats. Yes, cats – Bubbles is a passionate ailourophile, and at one point he and the band go on the road with a dozen pissed-off looking pusses aboard the tour bus, with litter boxes tucked in between the amps and beer crates.

For sketchy reasons they end up as the opening act for Billy Bob Thornton, playing himself, and his band the Boxmasters on a tour of Europe. In Prague, some of the band members and assorted hanging-on Trailer Park friends – including Randy (Patrick Roach), a roadie who is allergic to shirts (but not trousers or shoes) and therefore walks around barechested throughout the film – end up going off to a sex party with Thornton and his friend Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones. Bubbles doesn’t go because he has defecated in his pants, an ongoing issue he must contend with throughout.

That ought to give you some idea of the film’s tonal range and comic register, which to be frank doesn’t cover a broad spectrum. Nevertheless, the comic timing and bonhomie of the ensemble is sort of infectious, and (what do you know) some of the songs are pretty darn catchy. That doesn’t quite make up for the fact that the film drags on far longer than it needs to, but the algorithm won’t mind in the slightest.

• Standing on the Shoulders of Kitties: The Bubbles and the Shitrockers Story is in UK and Irish cinemas from 10 January.