Jared, meet Diablo. Diablo, meet Jared. The two of you really should get together for a drink. Yeah, I know Jared's married and all but that's not really why I suggest this. I just think the two of you share a thing or two in common that'd make for a good bonding moment, namely that both of you are being pretty conclusively crushed by the weight of unfair expectations brought on by your wildly overachieving first films.

Let's compare, shall we?

Mr. Hess first appeared on the scene with Napoleon Dynamite, a quirky picture with a largely unknown cast.  Made for a paltry $400,000, the film would draw a domestic gross of $44.5 million - meaning investors made more than a hundred dollars for every dollar they put in. The success was based almost entirely on incredibly strong word of mouth, driven in large part by the script co-written by Hess himself. That sort of return is what Hollywood suits dream about, and Hess was declared a new Golden Boy as expectations ramped sky high for his next project.

Ms. Cody? She arrived in 2007 as the much heralded former-stripper-turned-screenwriter of Juno which, like Napoleon Dynamite, featured a largely unknown cast and was propelled almost entirely by word of mouth and a quirky script. Not only would Juno clean up at awards time but it also ended up pulling a whopping $140 million at the box office after only a $7.5 million investment - not nearly as good a ratio as Napoleon, pulling only about twenty bucks for every dollar invested, but still enough to make the suits who backed the thing do a happy dance and declare Cody - like Hess - a new golden child.

Is it worth pointing out at this point that the same people who anointed Hess - that'd be Fox Searchlight - were also behind the crowning of Cody? I think it is, yes. But what the Searchlight folk failed to remember is that the charm and excitement of discovery only rolls around once and the things that many loved the first time out can quickly become primary criticisms with the sophomore effort. Cue up Hess' Nacho Libre - still a success but with cracks beginning to show in the veneer - and the Cody scripted Jennifer's Body, an outright bomb that could pull only $4 million in the opening weekend despite a massive press push.  And just two films into both of their careers you could already see critics criticizing both writers for the exact same traits they praised them for the first time out.

So, what brings this on?  Well, I'm just freshly back from a week of gorging myself on barbecue and blasting away - poorly - with shotguns in Texas where I was, officially at least, attending the fifth annual Fantastic Fest, a festival that began with the world premiere of Hess' third feature, Gentlemen Broncos. A loving ode to bad sci-fi and the kids who adore it - i.e., the younger versions of myself - Broncos, to be charitable, has not been winning a lot of love from critics. I like it fine but I seem to be one of the only ones that does and the only thing I can really put that down to is Hess-fatigue. The off-kilter characters, the odd visuals, the drier than dry absurd humor, all the things that made Napoleon such a huge hit are here in spades but, this time out, they surprise nobody and so the best most people managed to say about it was, "Yeah, it's okay." But you know what? If Hess had put Sam Rockwell on the back of a flying battle stag - complete with side mounted rocket launchers - in his first film instead of in his third people would be losing their shit over this thing right now.

So there you have it Jared and Cody. You were just too damn successful first time out and now doing the things that made you famous just isn't enough any more. Maybe you should take up knitting.