Director: Steve Barron
Cast: Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Michelle Burke, Michael McKean
Have I Seen it Before: Sure! Any real discussion of my awareness of the film will veer into what I actually think of the film, but I only add here that I have a strange memory of the film having a line of action figures—what movie didn’t have one in those years?—and I’m not entirely sure why. I also was under the impression that there was a day when Subway sandwiches didn’t exist, then this film came out, and those footlongs never left our lives.
Did I Like It: This movie either can’t or doesn’t try to answer or escape from a central question every film has to reckon with on some level: Who is this movie for?
it takes on the air of a family comedy with some sci-fi seasoning buried deep within the fry batter. On that front, it probably mostly succeeds. It’s inoffensive, and I remember as a kid being fairly amused by it.
A tame enough level of ambition undercuts other things the film might accomplish. An attempt to re-acquire the strange off-the-wall quality of the early years of Saturday Night Live mostly fails in service of the need to make a film the whole family can enjoy. Maybe most of the major players had kids. I’m told that can change a person, especially while those kids are young. Maybe Belushi died and everyone sobered up. It probably made their lives better, but the film does sadly suffer.
Another strange flex that the film can’t quite follow through on is the sheer tonnage of its cast. Almost everyone who has a connection to SNL or to well-regarded TV of the age brings to mind the over-stuffed cast of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). Whereas that film expands its scope to accommodate giving everyone in the guild work, this film breaks apart at less than 90 minutes, again, likely in a an attempt to be the most risk-averse commodity possible.