Wayne's World 2 (1993)

Director: Stephen Surjik

Cast: Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Christopher Walken, Tia Carrere

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: As I watch it this time, it didn’t work for me as much as it had in years past.

For years, I would have sworn by the fact that this is just as good as <Wayne’s World (1992)>. When Carvey has spent the last several decades insisting he wasn’t very good in the film, I blanched. When there was never a Wayne’s World 3, I always shook my head. We got three (and a perpetually fourth threatened) Austin Powers films, but we were only left with this? The kung-fu dubbing was (and still is) pretty great. The joke about the sweet shop owner works on me every time.

And that’s kind of the problem. I didn’t need to be told that Myers went off and wrote a completely different version of the movie—one in which Wayne (Myers) and Garth (Carvey) secede from the United State and form their own nation*—that was well into production before Paramount scuttled it as no one had bothered to get the rights to adapt the source material.

So we’re left with this. A couple of amusing bits, but the whole thing reeks of a single all-night writing session where the eventual answer was to dust off a bunch of sketches that never made it past the Friday Night slaughter.

I guess I’ve truly grown up. I only like the first Wayne’s World now. I’ll studiously avoid re-watching that one for a while. I’m not sure what I might do if that film doesn’t hit the same anymore.

*A comic concept that, if not original in its own right, would have certainly been strange for a movie based on an SNL sketch. Just imagine the Blues Brothers trying that. Ok, I could imagine that. Imagine the guys from A Night at the Roxbury (1998). Actually, that’s pretty funny, too. Why hasn’t this come to pass yet? At any rate I can still imagine the downside being that the idiots of the here and now would have taken some supremely stupid inspiration from that.

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.