Coneheads (1993)

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.

The Blues Brothers (1980)

Director: John Landis

Cast: John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, James Brown, Cab Calloway

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. Having parents who hailed from Mount Prospect, the BluesMobile was always a delightful chuckle growing up. Also put it in my mind that buying an old police car at auction would be a great way to get a vehicle that doesn’t look like much, but still has all the best parts and maintenance.

Maybe I took the wrong things away from this one.

Did I Like It: I look at a movie directed (and in this case largely written) by John Landis, and my immediate instinct is to not like. It sure helps that he hasn’t really made a watchable movie in thirty years, but his early stuff sure does throw me for a loop. You might come to his defense for what happened on the set of Twlight Zone: The Movie (1982), but giving the maximum weight to any kind of acquittal, the man always seemed to be so full of himself, so supremely confident that the movie he is making at that moment is worthy of any (and I do mean any) sacrifice that it gives the entire catalog a sour taste.

And then there’s the whole exercise that is The Blues Brothers. I remember reading in George Carlin’s final book that he had a wide-ranging apathy for a lot of the Saturday Night Live crowd, as he (and I’m wildly paraphrasing) couldn’t see why a bunch of white guys had anything about which to sing the blues. I would have counted myself among the fans of the film up until the moment I read that, and afterwards, wondering if that was part of the problem.

Then, finally, there is the question of whether or not any sketch from SNL should ever be flattened to the point that it runs over 90 minutes. To say nothing of the more than 120 minutes this asks us to endure. Wayne’s World (1992) works, but does anything else really work?

All of that comes together, and I should be firmly ambivalent about the film these days. And yet, the thing moves along at a clip and is a delight. It helps that Belushi and Aykroyd often take a back seat to other legendary musicians as things unfurl. It’s not quite as funny as I might have remembered, but it has more than enough attitude to compensate.

Wayne’s World (1992)

Director: Penelope Spheeris

Cast: Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Rob Lowe, Tia Carrere

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, please. Or perhaps I should say “Schya?” (which the new Blu-Ray steelbook tells me is the proper spelling)  I find it highly unlikely that someone could get through their childhood in the 90s and not catch this one. I’m probably more familiar with “Bohemian Rhapsody” from this than anything else…

Did I Like It: The film is funny, which is more than can be said for really any of the SNL-based feature films (yes, I’m including you,  The Blues Brothers (1980)), and it is far weirder than any film based on a recurring comedy sketch has any right to be. That weirdness, too, doesn’t limit it from authentically and affectionately depicting that unique, guileless aimlessness in your 20s which can be bought out entirely for $5000.

We could talk about all of that, but it’s obvious. There’s nothing new to be added to any of those points. Do you want to know where this movie rises above even movies occupying similar types of characters like Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) or Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)?

It’s in a dismantling of toxic masculinity that the film rises above its peers. Yes, its heroes are governed by a shallowness concerning the opposite sex, are dominated by a need for immediate gratification (does licorice go bad if you replace the rear view mirror of your car with a dispenser?), and are more interested in what people like than what they are like. But where other characters are usually terrified by nothing more than the implication of a man telling them they love them.

And yet here, there is no terror when Terry (Lee Tergesen) continuously tells characters he loves the. There’s just an awkwardness at the slightest acknowledgement of any real emotion between people. But in the end (albeit the mega-happy ending), that is all dispensed with to make everyone better people than they were at the beginning, even if it is in service of a joke.