Movies Aren’t Funny Even With Snl Cast
Wayne and Garth, meet Wan and Girth.
“Tommy Boy,” a road farce featuring the heavyset Chris Farley and the whiter-shade-of-pale David Spade - cast members of the current, much-maligned “Saturday Night Live” - debuted last week at the nation’s movieplexes.
Like “Wayne’s World,” the “SNL” spinoff that opened in February 1992, “Tommy Boy” was the No. 1 movie over the weekend. But its three-day take - $8 million - doesn’t even come close to the $18.1 million the Mike Myers-Dana Carvey comedy enjoyed when it was unleashed.
If the trajectory of “Billy Madison” - the recent film by “SNL” colleague Adam Sandler - is any gauge, the critically maligned “Tommy Boy” should top out at about $30 million. Despite abysmal reviews, Sandler’s dumb-guy-goes-back-to-school comedy also premiered in the top spot at the box office, but after seven weeks in release, it’s all but disappeared.
The first “Wayne’s World,” by contrast, earned $122 million, and resulted in a bonanza of Wayne and Garth merchandising and the canonization of several catchphrases.
But box office aside, there’s something else about “Tommy Boy” and “Billy Madison” and other recent films from the cast of NBC’s Saturday night revue. They’re not funny.
OK, comedy’s a subjective thing. Even “Wayne’s World” - a masterful send-up and celebration of metalhead stoopidity - got dumped on by some of the nation’s top critics. But there’s a consensus about the latest “SNL” pics and the last couple of seasons of “SNL” on TV.
A recent New York magazine (with “Tommy Boy’s” Farley on the cover) excoriated the 20-year-old program, describing a staff of ego-raging writers and performers, a preoccupied producer (Lorne Michaels) and a “deep spiritual funk” that’s pervaded the show.
“It’s Pat” - a one-joke comedy based on Julia Sweeney’s whiny, quasidrogynous “SNL character was deemed unreleasable by its studio, Disney. The film, which is truly painful, came out on video last week after appearing on a few regional screens in order to meet contractual obligations. Its cumulative box-office gross: $50,344.
“Stuart Saves His Family,” an entire feature spun off of Al Franken’s nebbishy self-help guru, Stuart Smalley, is set for an April 12 release, after a last-minute rejiggering in the editing room. Test audiences had “some problem about how jarring the serious things in it were,” reports “Stuart’s” writer-star. The film tackles issues of alcoholism, drug addiction, co-dependency and death. Said one focus-group participant to director Harold Ramis: “If I want to see a dysfunctional family screaming at each other, I’ll stay home.”
The gross of 1994’s “Coneheads”: a lackluster $21 million. The gross of Myers’ “So I Married an Axe Murderer”: $12 million. The gross of Carvey’s amnesiac comedy “Clean Slate”: $7 million. The gross of “Clifford,” with Martin Short as a short-pants horror: $6.5 million. The gross of “Trapped in Paradise,” a dumb-guys comedy that teamed “SNL’s” Carvey and Jon Lovitz with Nicolas Cage: $6 million.
There ARE folks who believe these films work. Farley and Spade, for two. Holding forth in a midtown Manhattan room also occupied by their publicists, who sit on a couch like a couple of grave chaperones, the “SNL” compatriots practically beam with “Tommy Boy” pride.
“We’re happy with it, definitely,” says Farley.
But the duo is aware of the “SNL” fallout. “It’s scary,” says Spade, “because we see friends around us - Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Jon Lovitz, all those guys - and they go out there and make movies and some work and some don’t. But it seems that people are after them.
Franken, a veteran “SNL” writer and co-producer of the show, admits that he’s concerned about audience expectations for his low-key “Stuart,” a daring if commercially dubious foray into the world of 12-steppers and support groups.
“One of my fears is that the audience will go to this - or not go to this - because it’s a ‘Saturday Night Live’ movie,” says Franken.
“I guess the bigger fear (isn’t) that they won’t go, but … that they’ll go thinking it’s ‘Wayne’s World.’ .. because they’ll be disappointed if they think that. I want people to go knowing that it’s a comedy - it IS a comedy - but that there is an emotional aspect to the movie, too.”
Of course, bad “SNL” movies are nothing new. For every “Blues Brothers” and “Ghostbusters,” there’s been a “Doctor Detroit” or a “Neighbors” that landed with a big, unfunny thud. But the sheer volume of mediocre “SNL” fare out there in recent years - from sub-par performances on the show to cinematic gems like “It’s Pat” - have created a sense of critical mass. And mass condemnation.
“We’re just a comedy show,” says Spade, defending his brethren against the negative roar. “We don’t go out and say, ‘We’re the best comedy show ever, I dare you to prove otherwise.’ We’re just a comedy show. If you’re going to start pushing people around, go after ‘Full House,’ all right?”
In December ‘92, Farley notes, Entertainment Weekly hailed the “SNL” crew as “entertainers of the year.” “Dave and Adam and Tim Meadows, the whole ‘Saturday Night Live’ gang,” he remembers.