Director: Peter Segal
Cast: Chris Farley, David Spade, Bo Derek, Brian Dennehy
Have I Seen it Before: Experiencing the main crux of my adolescence in the mid-90s, it was essentially required viewing. At some point, I had recorded an airing off of HBO, and I probably watched it more than I strictly had to.
Then again, I have the strongest memory of being no more than twelve, seeing Farley during an appearance on The Tonight Show and saying out loud. “Well, he’s not going to live very long.”
I was a weird kid, though.
Did I Like It: Generally accepted to be Farley’s greatest movie, I couldn’t help but wonder if that said more about the shortness of his career than anything else. Could it hold up after all of these years? Could anything?
Probably not. The film is 90 minutes of warmed over Capra-esque aww-shucks-ness with a few moments of Farley being Farley to fill the trailers and get the opening weekend grosses up. Farley can be funny, but after being on a bit of a Saturday Night Live jag lately after the one-two punch of the show’s 50th anniversary coupled with last year’s Saturday Night (2024) I think I’ve come to the conclusion that Farley’s manic energy could never be correctly captured by a feature film. It needed to be on display in live TV, where one could see him become a tornado, and then have to ask themselves whether or not they really saw what they just saw. Farley excelled at that. It’s what elevated him from just another featured player on the show, and that quality might have had some part in killing him.
Then again, I could be wrong. Had he lived, Farley might have found layers we never knew he had. If that had been the case, this film might have been forgotten altogether. It certainly wouldn’t hold up.