"Gentlemen Broncos" is another oddball entry from the ode-to-the-underdog canon of Jared and Jerusha Hess, the writing team responsible for the indie favorite "Napoleon Dynamite." Jared Hess again directs and serves up his most sophomoric humor yet with desperate gags involving snake poop and testicles.

The Hesses' misfit du jour is 15-year-old Benjamin, a home-schooled Utah kid with no friends. Michael Angarano plays him sweet, shy and charming. And when the aspiring writer's sci-fi opus is ripped off by former best-selling author Richard Chevalier (Jemaine Clement from HBO's "Flight of the Conchords"), it's fun to watch Angarano degenerate into anger frustration and vengeance - emotions the sheltered teen has probably never felt.

The convoluted plot can be summed up in just five words: boobs, balls, barf and bucks.

The boobs - or mammary cannons, as they're called here - and the wild bucks, belong to Benjamin's purloined sci-fi narrative, which plays out on screen in a fantasy sequence with Sam Rockwell portraying the hero, Bronco, a hirsute adventurer with a thing for aliens and testicles.

The balls and barf? Well, there's some gross-out puke scenes and Benjamin tries to make a buck selling his mother's homemade popcorn balls.

Sound weird?

It is.

And the weirdest parts are the two movies within the movie, as both Benjamin's version of his story, "Yeast Lords: The Bronco Years," and Chevalier's reworking of it unfold.

Jennifer Coolidge (aka Stiffler's mom from the  "American Pie" movies) plays - what else? - Benjamin's mother. Here, she's a widowed designer of modest nightgowns and a doting yet eccentric mom.

Rounding out the supporting cast of freaks and geeks are Mike White, who wrote "Nacho Libre," which Hess directed, as Dusty, a bizarre big-brother type to Benjamin who does the same breathy voice as Jon Heder in "Napoleon." Halley Feiffer ("The Squid and the Whale") gives a solid turn as Benjamin's friend and her sidekick, newcomer Hector Jimenez, is a repulsive budding filmmaker who is this film's Pedro.

They all look and sound straight out of "Napoleon Dynamite," which worked for Hess five years ago, but lightning hasn't struck twice.

"Gentlemen Broncos" has the same tone and feel as Hess' first film, but the sci-fi narrative, despite Rockwell ("Moon") giving it the old college try in a cringe-inducing role, really messes up things. When it's not paying homage to low-budget sci-fi films and geeky fan fiction, "Gentlemen Broncos" shows the type of unabashed heart that made the Hesses' earlier film a cult hit.

Angarano still manages to make Benjamin endearing, and the boy's relationship with his mother is ripe for comedy and drama, especially in the hands of an actress like Coolidge. Give us more of that and less of Rockwell's testicles in a jar.

Contact Dana Barbuto at dbarbuto@ledger.com. 

GENTLEMEN BRONCOS (PG-13 for some crude humor.) Cast includes Michael Angarano, Jennifer Coolidge, Jemaine Clement, Mike White and Sam Rockwell. 1 stars out of 4.

The Patriot Ledger