Filmed and set in Utah, Broncos tells the story of Benjamin Purvis (Michael Angarano), a home-schooled teenage science-fiction author who has written numerous stories, but his latest, an ode to his deceased father, is a masterpiece titled Yeast Lords. In his mind, we often see what the book is about -- Sam Rockwell plays the hero, Bronco (full-bearded like Ben's father), as a noble hillbilly warrior who has an ocelot as his companion. When his mother (Jennifer Coolidge) sends him to a writer's retreat, Ben meets his idol, the prolific, breast-fixated sci-fi legend Dr. Ronald Chevalier (Jemaine Clement), and realizes he's a bit pretentious. He leaves early, but not before entering his manuscript in a writing contest to be judged by Chevalier. But Chevalier is apparently not producing his best work anymore, and his editor tells him to write something good, or he's done. Of course, that's when he stumbles across Yeast Lords, an imaginative work that, while wholly original, was obviously written in loving emulation of his surreal, anatomy-focused style.

Naturally, he steals it, turning "Bronco" into Brutus, a white-haired, effeminate transsexual with a pet wolf, and it becomes his latest hit. Plagiarism is a familiar plot (one put to use in movies like Funny Farm and even recent episodes of Californication) and not a very elaborate one, at that, but it's at least something to drive the characters, which Napoleon Dynamite didn't really have. Another thing the film has on Dynamite is great acting. Michael Angarano plays Benjamin as a gutless, sexless loser, helping his mother out at the nightgown store and watching impotently as two friends he made at writing camp destroy Yeast Lords by turning it into their own low-budget space opera. Coolidge is great as his mother, turning off the dumb-bimbo personality she's become known for to play an earnest, hard-working mom who just wants to see her son succeed, and maybe her fashion line hit it big. And Jemaine Clement owns every scene as Chevalier, talking with a documentary narration-appropriate affect that makes his self-aggrandizing pronouncements even more comical.

Hess' influences are more clearly on display here than in Dynamite, as well. Not only is Benjamin's mom based on his own nightgown-selling mother, but a few of his favorite fantasy/sci-fi movies are referenced, as well. One scene where Bronco has rocks tied to his legs is a reference to The Man Who Saved the World (a.k.a. "Turkish Star Wars"), and the hordes of Cyclopean foes that Bronco and Brutus face have the exact same makeup as the cyclops in the comically earnest fantasy film Krull. At the very least, that will help out Netflix when this movie comes out on DVD: "If you liked Napoleon Dynamite, Krull and Turkish Star Wars, you might like Gentlemen Broncos."

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