Lost & Found In Armenia is a low brow, bottom of the barrel comedy that manages to be only barely unendurable. It feels like a dated film that Pauly Shore may have done if he were still working today a la Bio Dome, Encino Man, ETC. This film, however, stars Jamie Kennedy who's as close to Shore as one is able to get. They sound about the same, they have the same style of comedy and both of them only have one film on their resumes which they can actually point out and say it was fairly successful. This is a comedy that features stereotypical characters, a plot that may have worked if the execution weren't so bad and a message that is actually pretty nice but is done in such a mean spirited way that you can't really buy into it.
In the film...Kennedy plays Bill...the son to a wealthy senator who has just had his heart broken and is vacationing in Turkey. When his friend, George (Dave Sheridan) convinces him to (1) go on the beach in the first place and (2) go para sailing....Bill ends up in Armenia. This is because while para sailing, Bill's cable accidentally gets cut loose and then his parachute gets stuck to the wing of an airplane. Once he crashes into a barn in Armenia....he gets tied up because the Armenians think he's a Turkish spy. Not knowing anyone who speaks English..they find Ani (Angela Sarafyan)...a fellow villager who has been studying English abroad for three years. Bill then develops a kind of romance with Ani.
The first ten minutes are actually pretty funny. The idea of this happening to Bill because of a para sailing accident is actually kind of hilarious and the execution in that scene isn't bad itself. Also...the romance between Bill and Ani is sweet if not completely unbelievable. However, their romance doesn't get going until the last 15 minutes of the film. The 80 minutes in the middle consists of cliche comedy in which you're supposed to point and laugh at how wacky the foreigners are. Rather...you just there depressed at how unfunny the film is and at how low it aims. The character of Bill may have been funny and charming if giving something to do. However, the script gives him nothing to do but yell at the Armenians about the fact that he's not a spy. Also....the film's character of Ani's grandpa (Mikael Pogosyan) is yet another unrealistically wacky old person.
There is a subplot involving a man named Alexan (Hrant Tokhatyan)'s attempt to marry Ani despite her all too obvious chagrin. This subplot provides the film with a feature length running time. It is a ridiculous, completely unfunny subplot that takes up about half of the film. Perhaps that's what the filmmakers failed to see. They weren't fully aware that they had a script that didn't have enough to fill even an hour so they thought the subplot would fit in perfectly with the rest of the film and allow the film to have an adequate running time. Well, I'd like to personally tell the filmmakers that thinking the subplot would actually fit in was dead wrong but thinking that this was a good idea for a film in the first place was even more wrong.
(1 out of 5 Stars, The film is Not Rated)
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