Don't listen to the negative reviews

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The entire 3 stars from my review goes to the visual artists behind this film. There is some creative art to be found, especially in hell. Interestingly, the sets and camera positions looked like they were made for a point-and-click adventure game. I am not sure if that is bad or good, but it all looks good.As for the rest of the film, me and my partner both walked out on it...well, as much as you can walk out on a movie in the confines of your own living room.The writing is so atrociously talentless and the attempts at dirty jokes are so strikingly unfunny that one can only conclude that the script was written by a couple of middle-aged construction workers, who don't care at all for writing but have agreed to quickly write something because they were given 5 buks.The cast of the film has some notable names, and the performances are not terrible, but you can tell why the actors did not promote this film and why it has faded into obscurity.

Hell and Back is for all intense and purposes a cinematic inevitability. TV today is filled to the brim with adult cartoon shows catering to a certain male demographic trapped in a state of arrested development. The best of these shows are every bit as artful, thoughtful and entertaining as any 30-minute sitcom. Yet for every Bob's Burgers (2011-present) and Archer (2009-present) there's a cringe-worthy time-waster like American Dad! (2005-present) that threatens to derail the entire adult toon genre with gleeful insult humor and lazy references.Hell and Back is brought to you by the same stop-motion studios as Robot Chicken (2005-present) a fifteen minute sketch show involving action figures and claymation figures. The plot revolves around three underachieving friends who work at a rundown pier side carnival. Curt (Riggle) assistant manages while Remy (Swardson) works primarily on the Hell's Gate ride featuring a few cheap scares for the price of a few dollars and your dignity. Augie (Miller), the chubby third wheel of the group works as the mechanic, or at least I think he does; it doesn't really matter. What does matter is the trio come across a demonic book, Curt swears a blood oath on it, immediately renigs and is dragged to hell. Remy and Augie follow him and face demons, assorted tortures and the Devil (Odenkirk) himself to save their friend from eternal damnation.As with Robot Chicken, the animation style in this film evokes the memory of Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas (1987) only with a displeasing slurry of dirty jokes and adult situations. The same sophomoric, sporadic and anarchic humor we've seen on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim lineup debuts on the big screen only without pathos, perspective, immediacy, topicality or energy. All of the humor is crude for the sake of being crude as if two twelve-year-old boys wrote the script and had a quota for the amounts of f***s, s***s and q****s they were required to squeeze in.Don't get me wrong, I'm no shrinking violet when it comes to crude, rude and politically incorrect jokes. I don't raise my nose at George Carlin's seven words you can't say on TV or the occasionally funny Family Guy (1999-present) gag. But crudeness for crudeness sake does not a good movie make. The film features bluntly stated dialogue discussing lewd sex acts, the shame of virginity in your 20's and one unbearably drawn-out discussion of tree rape that is brought up several times. Ironically the jokes that made me chuckle the hardest were the subtle ones such as a soul being tortured by a demon by trying to order a pepperoni pizza from a Taco Bell/Pizza Hut Express.Those of you who are a fan of ShadowMachine Films and their genre expanding TV shows will be mightily disappointed by this stop-motion slacker comedy. Despite some funny one-off jokes, Hell and Back has precious few redeeming qualities outside it's talented voice cast. The movie's dialogue is crass and confusing while it's sight-gags are obvious and undeveloped. The story is awful featuring three obnoxious leads who learn nothing from their experience; other than maybe devil's brew is delicious. The side characters are worse still including an ineffective devil, a boring tag-along in Mila Kunis's half-human, half-demon Deema, and an especially braggadocios Orpheus (McBride). Do yourself a favor, miss this trip to hell and watch a few episodes of BoJack Horseman (2014-present), a show that better represents a descent into hell. It's also so much funnier.

I did love the fact that the movie was a stop motion animated film, and it does have a few laugh out loud jokes, plus it is a nice Hard rated R as well, filled with mostly really dirty jokes.But overall, the movie is pretty weak. That may explain why I did not hear about it until I just happen to past the movie theater and saw the poster. Especially, considering what an all star cast of voice overs that are featured in the film, like Susan Sarandon and Bob Odenkirk.The animation is actually pretty dull and unattractive and only a few jokes really stood out while the rest were stale. I think I was expecting something like Heavy Metal, and was surely disappointed with what it really was, a lame stoner flick, which would not be so bad if maybe Cheech and Chong were the guys battling their way out of hell.

"Hell & Back" poses a sharp contrast in quality between the wealth of its talented voice cast and the sheer pedestrian mediocrity of its screenplay. It's amazing that a barrage of talented and proved comics from the likes of T.J. Miller, Mila Kunis, Bob Odenkirk, and J.B. Smoove, would subject themselves to something so bland and ugly. From its choppy stop-motion style of animation, its lack of real creativity in its jokes, and its miserable color palette, there is a striking joylessness present in "Hell & Back" that is only highlighted by the film's lackluster writing.The story opens in a failing theme-park, largely run by slacker employees Remy (voiced by Nick Swardson), Augie (T.J. Miller), and Curt (Rob Riggle). When Curt borrows a mint from Remy, taking a blood oath to pay him back before reneging on his promise shortly after, the three are sucked into a vortex that takes them to Hell, where they are seen as "mortals" awaiting sacrifice. While Curt is the only one who is set to be sacrificed, for breaking a blood oath, Remy and Augie are also planned to be executed simply because of their presence in Hell as mortals. As a result, they team up with a demon named Deema (Mila Kunis), who is searching for Orpheus, a famous spirit who is said to have saved countless mortals who's souls were doomed to perish in Hell in time before the Devil (Bob Odenkirk) decides to sacrifice the three men.Despite the high stakes, the film feels like a constant array of tired stoner jokes written by a gang of adolescents that still find using at least two curse words in every sentence is hilarious. Admittedly, however, the film did get some laughs out of me when the small-scale, background jokes took over. Consider the scenes that involve the demons of Hell tempting the souls by having a Taco Bell/Pizza Hut counter. When one of the souls requests a pepperoni pizza, the demon informs him that they only have the Pizza Hut sign up as decoration and they are only a Taco Bell. "Welcome to Hell," the demon says whilst giggling, upon informing the poor soul. This happens a couple of other times in the film and works because of how simply outlandish and ridiculous the scene plays out, in addition to a few scenes of demons looking up the sins of the souls to see what constitutes their presence in Hell.These scenes are few and far between, however, as the bulk of the film has Remy and Augie bumbling on to random setpieces in Hell, witnessing some crass display of juvenile gags all captured in some of the most visually ugly scenery I've seen all year. With all the lame jokes occurring and the setting feeling so dim and dingy, there's simply very little positivity in this film to keep an upbeat frame of mine. Comedies set in underworlds or places of little hope obviously have difficultly meriting this constant stream of upbeat humor in contrast to the setting, but when both elements fall apart here, "Hell & Back" doesn't have a leg to stand on, frankly.Finally, there's a real cheapness to the animation here. The stop-motion animation is evidently rushed, as characters, especially when walking or moving very quickly, show a peculiar jerkiness to their motions that indicates that figures' poses were shifted too quickly, and thus, don't appear fluid. This doesn't occur frequently, but when it does, it makes the whole film seem off balance, and, much like the writing, poorly conceived.I remember hearing of "Hell & Back" earlier in the year and thought it would be something of a box office surprise; we rarely get adult animated films, and if we do, they are usually so obsessed with the idea of being vulgar and animated ("Cheech and Chong's Animated Movie" and "Jay and Silent Bob's Super Groovy Cartoon Movie" to name a few) that they wind up being throwaway projects of little merit. I felt that the talented cast of this particular film would crush that stereotype and lift it up to certain quality. Unfortunately, with the startlingly silent marketing for the film and the quiet release, "Hell & Back" will likely join other contemporaries as an experiment that failed largely because of its worst tendencies.