Chris Farley

Beverly Hills Ninja

temporalparadoxLeave a comment
Beverly Hills Ninja. Tristar Pictures 1997.

Before watching the movie:

I think I only just realized how commonly “Beverly Hills” is used as an adjective meant to evoke something in the vicinity of “spoiled rich white people”. As someone who grew up only vaguely aware that Beverly Hills is a neighborhood in California, (Beverly Hills 90210 was popular in my childhood but I have seen zero seconds of it and didn’t even know what it was about) I never really picked up on a deeper meaning. I was most aware of The Beverly Hillbillies, and it took a long time to click with me that the town itself was supposed to connote the richest of the rich and the family wasn’t just in the richest neighborhood in your typical town.

I would really like to see this movie do a little more with Farley’s character than have us point and laugh at him for the whole run. However, I don’t have high hopes for him to have much dignity. Maybe at best, this can be something that Kung Fu Panda owes a lot to while improving upon it.

Continue reading →

Black Sheep

temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Black Sheep. Paramount Pictures 1996.
Black Sheep. Paramount Pictures 1996.

Before watching the movie:

Chris Farley and David Spade. That’s all I need to know.

Okay, apparently there’s a man running for office and Chris Farley is Rob Ford his misbehaving brother who keeps getting into headlines for all the wrong reasons, dragging the family name though the mud. What comes to mind is Spin City or The Thick of It, but with familial ties instead of political ones.

I guess I should say that from what I have in front of me, I’ve been assuming that Farley and Spade play brothers (which I would buy in the context of such a comedy), but on second thought, Spade is probably the head of the PR team or at least the member personally responsible for keeping Farley’s character in line, because that’s the combination that gives them the most opportunity to play off each other. Spade’s type of character is much more of an image manager than an office-seeker, anyway.

Continue reading →

Coneheads

temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Coneheads. Paramount Pictures 1993.
Coneheads. Paramount Pictures 1993.

Before watching the movie:

Have I seen this before?  There’s something special in my memory about Coneheads, but I can’t quite place it. I’m fairly sure that I had a friend in Kindergarten or first grade who talked about it fondly, but the only concrete recollection I have is that there were a few clips of it in a Paramount promotional montage on a couple of tapes I liked to watch a lot. And more recently, I’ve seen some of the original sketches. Since my memories are so hazy, and there are a few alternative options, I’m going to conclude for now that I haven’t seen it before, and if I did, it was so long ago that nothing really stuck and my view will still be fresh. However, in the interest of transparency, I’m making this decision public.

While not as widely talked about as other Saturday Night Live spinoffs, this seems to have a pretty positive reputation. The concept certainly offers room for a full-fledged plot and lends itself to a higher budget. In fact, it may be so much more of a movie concept than a sketch concept that it becomes hard to remember it got its start on SNL, like Blues Brothers.

Continue reading →

Tommy Boy

temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Tommy Boy. Paramount Pictures 1994.
Tommy Boy. Paramount Pictures 1995.

Before watching the movie:

I know this is a big cult favorite, but I was never very into Chris Farley. Maybe if he’d lived longer, he’d have done something that specifically interested me, but the main thing I think of for him is the “I live in a van down by the river” guy, which is not a character I find funny.

On the other hand, his costar is David Spade, whom I do like, and don’t see enough of. While I think I had my fill of Just Shoot Me, some slightly less abrasive Spade is a lot of fun. I’m not really sure that gets the idea a cross, since “abrasive” is what he does, but he was just too much there.

Continue reading →