I thought “Yeah, this will be a fun movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Obviously if Mr. Hasselhoff is down with the idea of playing a version of himself where he deserves to be killed it should be funny.”
For the most part my initial thoughts were correct. David Hasselhoff plays a fictional version of himself, one in which he still owns K.I.T.T. and is as popular as any celebrity out there. His pompous take on himself is certainly the highlight of the film. There’s one scene taking place at a party hosted by Hasselhoff and is one of the funniest sections of the movie.
What I had a problem with was the plot lacked understandable logic. I understand the premise and find that believable, but the execution of the story left quite a bit to be desired. Ken Jeong is Chris, a nightclub owner who winds up owing a lot of money, so much he finds himself in so much trouble he decides to tip the scales in his favor with the annual celebrity death pool by killing off his pick – David Hasselhoff.
The setup is fine, and there are definite moments in the film that work, but overall the execution is clunky. We never get a proper explanation as to why Chris needed to borrow so much money from the loan shark in the first place. Then there is the death pool itself. It is established in a scene that doesn’t make much sense, as if it isn’t an annually refreshing pool so much as a singular event.
Chris decides one of the ways he is going to try and kill David Hasselhoff is with a pizza laden with a deathly allergic food. Never mind that Hasselhoff would taste it and spit it out or even smell it and not eat in the first place. In delivering the (supposedly deadly) pizza to Hasselhoff at a public autograph signing on the beach Chris pushes his way through the line. This makes no sense. Why not just walk around the line? There was no reason to literally push past people in line to deliver the pizza. The pizza could be delivered by coming in approximately two feet to either side of the line of people waiting for autographs. This is the kind of logic Killing Hasselhoff displays.
And there are far too many dick jokes. It is almost as if screenwriter Peter Hoare and director Darren Grant are fulfilling a middle school fantasy.
There are some deleted scenes, some of which could have fit right back int he film without dragging it down. At 80 minutes Killing Hasselhoff breezes by pretty quickly. It isn’t a bad film, but it should have been a heck of a lot better.