Review: “The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man”

Situated somewhere in the neighborhood of a ripped-from-the-headlines true crime tale, absurdist comedy, tech age paranoid thriller, and slice-of-life indie, you’ll find The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man. Writer and director Braden Sitter culled the inspiration for his bizarre feature film from a viral news event that occurred in Toronto in 2019, when a man wearing a yellow construction hat dumped an orange Home Depot bucket filled with human excrement on several unassuming individuals across the city before he was apprehended. In Sitter’s fictionalized retelling, the culprit is Miguel (Rishi Rodriguez), who— in a framing device that situates the bulk of the action as flashbacks— divulges his story to a shocked journalist (Spencer Rice) in a shitty motel room. The opening scenes of the film reveal Miguel to be a terminally online, socially awkward loner. He struggles to maintain a conversation with his mother on the phone. He seems to spend the bulk of his time at home alone, vacillating between masturbating and getting high. He needs a job, and appears to believe that having one will fix his problems. But when a cute girl approaches him, genuinely wanting to strike up a conversation, he immediately jumps to the conclusion that she must be a spy sent by the CIA, leading him to embark down a howl-inducing government inference Reddit wormhole.

Is Miguel depressed? Has near-constant doom-scrolling merely led him to believe in conspiracies that aren’t true? Is The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man actually a searing portrayal of a person struggling with their mental health, or a cautionary tale about the intersection of internet tomfoolery and reality? Does it matter? Not particularly, especially when the action centerpiece of the film— the thing we’re all here for, the thing it says on the tin— kicks into gear after an admittedly patience-trying first act, Sitter having crafted the exact right cocktail of gross-out hilarity, cringey social scenarios, and abject horror. Murky as Miguel’s motivations may be, suffice it to say that he experiences an epiphany that leads him to a filthy baptism before embarking on his reign of terror. Miguel wanders the streets of Toronto, dumping a bucket brimming with an unspecified combination of feces and urine on unsuspecting civilians with apparently no rhyme or reason: a woman pushing a baby stroller. A busker sitting on the street corner, playing guitar. A girl checking her phone, coffee and tote full of groceries in hand. It isn’t so much the act of dispensing the waste (apparently, a mixture consisting primarily of melted chocolate ice-cream) that’s so comically rendered, as it is the manner in which Sitter lets the camera linger on the victim and their surroundings. Confusion, shock, horror, and disgust gradually play out across the former’s faces, while apathetic passersby linger in the background, observing but offering nothing in the way of assistance. These montages are frequently accompanied by covers of recognizable songs by the likes of Nirvana, The Rolling Stones, and Credence Clearwater Revival, swapping out the original lyrics for pee and poo adjacent terms in the tradition of Weird Al Yankovic in a move that accents the action on screen while cleverly using fair use to sidestep paying expensive fees for the rights to the songs.

This is all in line with the ethos of the New Toronto Bizarre, a burgeoning movement in Canadian cinema that Sitter is one of the filmmakers at the forefront of. Their movies are weird and aggressively indie, not only in their DIY on-screen make-up— The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man was made cheaply (in a post-film Q&A, Sitter estimated the budget for the film to sit at around 5,000 U.S. dollars), and often utilizes frenetic editing and a shaky handheld camera to situate the viewer inside its subject’s addled mind— but in their off-screen life. The New Toronto Bizarre directors largely eschew mainstream distribution methods and prestigious (but pricey and often exclusive) film festivals in favor of self-distribution, which could mean anything from dropping a movie on YouTube to, in the case of The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man, reaching out to cinemas directly to find out if they’re interested in booking the film. It’s a surefire method of ensuring that an oddball project such as this one will eventually be lifted to cult status (even the logo and name of the film’s production company, EH24, is a clear riff on A24), but there’s a real sense of collaboration and community amongst this group, living and working in a place that’s noted for its vibrant arts scene, but also for being one of the most expensive cities in the world; many of Sitter’s filmmaker friends make up the bulk of his movie’s cast and crew.

That Toronto specificity is a major part of why The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man works. Sitter incorporates a delightful and hysterical cameo by one of the city’s local cinema legends into the film, a new generation of filmmakers paying homage to a long-standing local institution. Miguel snaps after being asked one too many times where the CN Tower is. But we don’t actually see the city’s most iconic landmark in the film, really. Sitter takes us straight to the neighborhoods, the parks and grungy laundromats and average apartment interiors. And he takes us straight to the people: there are many lovely (but still funny) interludes involving recurring characters, like a pair of squabbling sisters who play off each other marvelously, or a pair of poet pals— Paul (Paul Bellini) and Neal (Neal Armstrong)— whose tense relationship begins to heal after one of them becomes Miguel’s victim, or Paul’s attraction to a longtime friend who’s recently ended a relationship. These are all people just trying to live their lives— they’re just living them under the constant threat of having literal shit dumped on them at any moment. I won’t attempt to reach for a metaphor there, particularly as the film’s rather pedestrian resolution doesn’t really point to one. Regardless, all these seemingly disparate elements meld into a work that’s as strangely affecting as it is wildly entertaining. And watching The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man, a film whose knowledge of cinematic history and meme culture stretches all the way from Lillian Gish to the Dancing Baby, it’s difficult not to feel as if you are experiencing the dawn of a new and exciting movement.

The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man is playing in select theaters; find more info about upcoming screenings here. Runtime: 79 minutes.