Coneheads

A Tale of Two Connies

What's it about?

Tonight's nostalgic pic is "Coneheads" (Paramount, 1993). Alien interlopers Beldar (Dan Aykroyd) and Prymatt (Jane Curtain) have a malfunction on their spaceship while on their way to Earth to conquer the planet. The ship goes down in the ocean and the two are forced to swim to shore without weapons or the means to communicate with their home planet, Remulak. The two find that they know nothing about the local culture, but are forced to blend in until they can contact their superiors. Beldar uses his advanced technical knowledge to work as a TV repair man for Otto (Sinbad) and uses the opportunity to secretly construct a device to contact Remulak.

Ozzie and Harriet, if Ozzie and Harriet were immigrants. And horrific aliens.

He is informed that a space cruiser will be sent to Earth to pick up the two in seven "zurls" (which is apparently the equivalent of nearly two decades on Earth). Prymatt expresses concern and reveals that she is pregnant, to Beldar's delight. When Otto realizes that Beldar is an "illegal alien" he arranges a meeting with mobster Carmine (Adam Sandler) to get him some documentation.

Aw, he's so young! Also, not very funny.

Unbeknownst to everyone, the documents are being tracked by United Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agents and their insane director, Gorman Seedling (Michael McKean).

This man is an absolute legend.

After the INS raids the aliens' trailer home, Beldar and Prymatt relocate to a new job (taxi driver) and a basement apartment, saving money to buy a home to raise their daughter in.

Driving Miss Drew-ey.

When the second INS raid fails and jeopardizes his promotion, Seedling makes tracking down the aliens his main priority. Beldar and Prymatt give birth to a baby girl and settle into successful suburban life, while their daughter, Connie (Michelle Burke) grows up as an earthling.

She's played as a normal girl in this interpretation, unlike the original sketches.

Can the family maintain their cover while waiting for rescue?

Some background

Wow this is *checks watch* THIRTY YEARS OLD NOW?! That can't be right. Why do my bones hurt?

This is based on the original Saturday Night Live sketches produced by Lorne Michaels and starring Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtain, and Laraine Newman (as the original Connie) all the way back in 1977. There was an effort made before to revive the property (in the 1980s they made some new sketches with Phil Hartman and Nora Dunn taking over for Aykroyd and Curtain), and also make the property more mainstream (see my review of the animated pilot). This film took that humble beginning and made it a blockbuster special-effects-laden film with a $30,000,000 budget (an astronomical amount in 1993)! The ads were everywhere, and it was one of the first times I remember the restaurant chain Subway really leaning into commercial promotions (a Subway restaurant is even prominently featured in a scene). This film had a gigantic cast of well-known comedians and soon-to-be-famous stars.

How big were the stars? This background character swimming coach is played by Ellen DeGeneres.

It's funny, the gags are very visual, and it got absolutely totaled at the box office, only bringing in just over $21,000.000 worldwide, failing to even meet its budget. Even today the film is listed as "rotten" on RottenTomatoes.com, absolutely hated by critics and fans alike.

The good

Surprisingly, despite is cold by-the-numbers corporate veneer, I don't hate this film. I don't know that you can fault the cast for how bad it was received, as it has an astounding amount of Saturday Night Live alumni and NBC sitcom stars in the cast, and every scene and bit part had me pointing at the screen and shouting, "ooh! I know that person!" It delighted me, especially since it makes the aggressive aliens of Remulak seem just as clumsy, overconfident, and incompetent as their earthling counterparts (my favorite joke is when starship Captain Orecruiser, played by Garret Morris, accidentally hits the moon while pulling away from Earth and just pretends like it's normal).

Even if you don't know who Garret Morris is, you've probably seen him in something.

I like the "immigrants are people too" message, but it's not really delivered cleverly or leaned on as much as it could be.

The bad

The film doesn't have very many twists, especially in this day and age, and really just leans into its B-movie tendencies, but while its laughs are usually obvious it rarely goes for the guttural gross-out humor of most "Happy Madison" films, of which this shares some sizeable DNA.

This horrific scene at the dentist is about as bad as it gets.

The one sore spot for me is the sexual aggressiveness of Chris Farley's character "Ronnie," as he almost assaults Connie at one point, but it is played off as "normal" and "romantic" later on.

This character isn't great, but is typical of Chris Farley at the time. 

This is rather shockingly one of the shortest movies I've ever watched, clocking in at just 86 minutes from beginning to the end credit crawl. It might be dragging a bit in spots which is why it seems longer, but I couldn't say for sure; it seems like a normal length film despite its hastened approach.

Go ahead, watch it with the kids

This movie should be okay for younger viewers. It's mostly just a family sitcom with a few light horror elements that are all played for laughs. There's no swearing, although there is a lot of alien sex-talk and innuendo, but as most of the dialogue in these scenes is made up of nonsense words younger viewers might not gather what the scene is referring to even if they understand the tone.

WARNING: May contain questionable levels of Spade.

Is it worth watching? Eeeeh… Probably not. If you're familiar with the cast of SNL and the liked the original sketches it is well worth seeing. It's pretty inoffensive overall, and you might just get a laugh or two, but don't expect biting social commentary or to bust a gut from laughing so hard.

Where can you watch it?

"Coneheads" is available to rent or buy on most platforms, and is can be streamed for no extra cost with YouTube Premium (which is where I watched it), as well as for free with commercials on some other providers (like Pluto TV) at the writing of this review.

Never Say Never Again

Again, Probably Saying It, Probably

What's it about?

Tonight's nostalgic pic is "Never Say Never Again" (Warner Bros., 1983). British secret agent 007 James Bond (Sean Connery) has become middle-aged, and despite being frequently put into "war games" by his handlers, he still longs for more active field work.

"I turned down Schtar Wars because I didn't underschtand it, so when they gave me thisch, I took it!"

His disappointing performance in the war games causes his superior, "M," to send him to a health clinic to recover from years of smoking and drinking. Meanwhile, at the headquarters for the Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion (Sp.E.C.T.R.E.), leader Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Max Von Sydow) gives his lieutenants a situation report on the organization's current ventures.

Aw! Kitteh!

While at the health clinic, Bond observes another patient, U.S. Air Force Captain Jack Petachi (Gavan O'Herlihy) being abused by his nurse, Fatima Blush (Barbara Carrera), who recognizes Bond and sends another SPECTRE henchman, Lippe (Pat Roach), to eliminate him.

Remember the bald muscle guy from "Raiders of the Lost Ark? Now he has hair.

After what is possibly one of the most memorable fights in any James Bond movie, Bond manages to kill Lippe (in a way that gave me nightmares as a kid) and report to his superiors.

This death may not seem overly horrific, but you didn't see what he had thrown in his eyes beforehand.

Jack Petachi, it turns out, has been drugged, bought, and blackmailed by SPECTRE to use a surgically implanted prosthetic eye to allow the criminals to steal two nuclear weapons from a test flight;

A novel (and more practical twist) on the "doppelganger" trope. 

if he doesn't do their bidding, they'll kill his sister, Domino (Kim Basigner). Once the deed is done, Blush kills Petachi while his sister is unknowingly held in captivity by SPECTRE second-in-command Maximillian Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer).

He even has a front row seat to her jazzercise workouts.

Once SPECTRE makes their demand of 25% of every nation's gross domestic product, the leaders of the world go into a panic, and M is forced to put Bond back into service to track down Largo and put an end to SPECTRE's scheme. Can he do it? Of course he can. This is a James Bond movie, after all…

The strange case of Stavro

… Sort of. The production of the Bond films is fascinating, and a great example of intellectual property rights. I won't get into everything here, but in case you don't know, this movie is a re-make of another Bond story, "Thunderball," the movie version of which also starred Sean Connery as James Bond. At the time of "Never Say Never Again," the MGM Studio Bond film production was being handled by Albert R. Broccoli's Eon Productions with Roger Moore starring as Bond, but long-time Bond enthusiasts might have noticed that after the 1960s there is little-to-no mention of SPECTRE or Blofeld, and that's because of "Thunderball." See, "Thunderball" was originally a movie script developed by producer Kevin McClory, writer Jack Whittingham, and James Bond creator Ian Fleming. When the initial collaboration fell through, Fleming went on to write the novel "Thunderball" based on the work, but didn't credit McClory or Whittingham, resulting multiple lawsuits that eventually resulted in McClory taking back the rights to SPECTRE and related characters (which is why the Roger Moore Bond films switch to Blofeld-like industrialists -- but not specifically Blofeld -- as his antagonists of choice). After 10 years, McClory began to re-adapt "Thunderball," and this movie is the result of that messy break-up. It's also why the Eon Productions cast of James Bond regulars doesn't make it into the film (which is ironic, as most of that cast -- minus Connery -- appeared in the 1967 film "Operation Little Brother" reprising their roles, which stars Sean Connery's little brother Neil as the brother of the unnamed James Bond… I might have to cover that film too).

The good

So how does it hold up? This is easily one of my favorite Bond films. As a child, I must confess that I never made the connection to "Thunderball;" It was many years later while re-watching that I recognized that the villains' names were both "Largo," and the rest of the pieces fell into place. While Connery is essentially playing the same Bond (albeit much older), he's ever-so-slightly less misogynous in this film than the original (where he sexually assaults a healthcare worker -- here he just has a lot of inappropriate touching), 

He almost gets Domino's permission in this scene. Almost.

the new cast is mostly superior to the originals. In particular, Klaus Brandauer's Largo is scary, but in a more subtle, sinister way than Adolfo Celi's humorless eyepatch-wearing ogre in the original. Brandauer is funny, with a cherub-like face that makes him likable, but on a dime can turn his charming smile into a deeply psychotic grimace.

He seems insane at times, making him a terrifying villain.

Carrera's Fatima Blush serves the same capacity as Luciana Paluzzi's "Fiona" in the original film, but she plays the role with a bloodlust that is fueled by her inability to kill Bond, which makes her more formidable.

There is a visual pun where the more bond lives the less buttoned-down her appearance gets.

About the only character that falls flat for me is Basinger's Domino; while she is objectified almost as much as Claudine Auger in the original (lots of tight outfits and swimsuits), she doesn't seem to have as many lines and is just there to look worried and essentially do nothing other than act as a prop for the men in the scenes she's in.

"You're so tensche! Let me rub you with my handsch!"

Director Irvin Kershner, who might be best known for "Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back" (AKA "The Best Star Wars Movie Ever Made") is at the height of his powers here, with dynamic action scenes, frenetic chase sequences, and giving this movie and air of science fiction mixed with a bit of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" style set pieces.

This motorcycle chase is gripping!

The man knows how to create a set piece on a budget!

The Bond gadgets in this movie are much more subtle than in the Eon films, but in a way that adds to their real-world usefulness. This is the first appearance of the much-vaunted laser wristwatch, a Bond staple.

"Ach! There'sch a lascher in me wrischtwatch!"

The only "trick" motor vehicle in the film is Bond's motorcycle, which has a rocket booster and wheel bumpers -- that's it. There is an exploding pen, and later a rocket-assisted landing platform (which might be a callback to the utterly pointless jetpack in "Thunderball"), but little else. If nothing else, at least this version of James Bond has the good sense to wear a black wetsuit and black tanks when diving on a covert mission, unlike the original version where he wore -- and I am not making this up -- a bright orange wetsuit with bright white tanks when trying to be sneaky.

Even so, the underwater scenes are still visually comprehensive.

The bad

Still, as a not-quite-James-Bond film, there are things that you are going to miss:

Look, we're not even going to talk about what they did to the casino scene.

The aforementioned casting changes seem odd (perhaps most notably is that "Q" is not played by Desmond Llewelyn, and that saddens me)

"I came here looking for Q. Who the bloody hell are you?"

, but you also won't hear the iconic "James Bond: 007" theme written by Monty Norman. Gone also, for some reason or another, is the iconic Aston Martin DB5, replaced by a rather impressive-but-not-as-cool Bentley 4 1/4 Litre Gurney Nutting.

I mean, it's shiny. I guess.

It's a small price to pay, but it can be noticeable.

It's a James Bond film

This movie is PG. There's not a lot of swearing, and not a lot of blood, but people do die on-screen, and there are a few moments of casual racism (particularly to Middle Eastern people), but hey, they cast Bernie Casey as Felix Leiter, making him the first black man to portray the character over twenty years before Jeffrey Wright did in "Casino Royale," and he's awesome in this, so that's not nothing.

Blaze that trail!

Where can you find it?

This film is currently available to stream on Amazon Prime Video for no extra cost with the monthly subscription, so check it out if you're interested.

Mister Bond, meet Mister Bean!

Eight Crazy Nights

76 Wasted Minutes

What's it about?

Tonight's nostalgic pic is "Eight Crazy Nights" (Columbia Pictures, 2002). Davey Stone (Adam Sandler) is a public nuisance during the holidays, getting drunk, dine-and-dashing, stealing from his neighbors, and ultimately destroying Dukesberry's holiday decorations, giant ice sculptures in the shape of Santa Clause and a menorah awkwardly placed by one another in the center of town.

Honestly, this is probably just Adam Sandler before SNL

He's swiftly caught and almost sentenced to prison when a 70-year-old man named Whitey (also voiced by Adam Sandler) offers to take stewardship of Davey while he referees youth basketball, a sport which Davey dominated in his youth.

The moment this guy comes on screen, abandon all hope of entertainment.

Davey quickly begins to cause headaches for Whitey, but after being reunited with his childhood sweetheart, Jennifer (Jackie Titone, later married to Adam Sandler in real life) and her son, Benjamin (Austin Stout), Davey begins to take an interest in teaching the boy how to play basketball.

Generic character model, meet generic voice actress.

This is cut short when Davey's trailer is burned down leaving him homeless.

The movie depicts this as arson, but veterans of trailer park fires know that it didn't have to be.

Whitey takes Davey in to live with him and his sister, the equally diminutive Eleanore (ALSO VOICED BY ADAM SANDLER).

Just when you think that the movie can't get any worse, it doubles down.

Just when it appears that Davey is starting his upward climb, he begins to slide again. Can Davey get his life back on track and help the people he loves?

Some background

This is a "Happy Madison" production, and as such it features Adam Sandler and quite a few of his "Saturday Night Live" alumni in various roles, as well as several of his friends who turn up in minor roles, mostly animated to look like their real-life counterparts, including Kevin Nealon as the Dukesberry mayor and Jon Lovitz in a brief cameo.

Yep. That's Jon Lovitz all right...

Other stars associated with Happy Madison show up as minor cameos, including Carl Weathers and Tyra Banks.

The bad

Hey, remember when Adam Sandler made funny movies? They were weird, loud, and a little bit offensive, but they were funny! That was over by the time this came out. THIS MOVIE IS HORRIBLE. Let's break down why:

The Cast

Adam Sandler plays the three main characters in this movie: Davey, Whitey, and Eleanore, and while I can laud his performance of Eleanore (it's pretty good), the character and voice performance of Whitey is outright insulting. The character's voice is irritating, as it's just Adam Sandler doing a falsetto. If you haven't seen the movie, you might not realize just how annoying this character sounds. Most of the cast are not professional voice actors, and unfortunately, it's pretty noticeable. Hey, who's that who does the outwardly racist performance of the Chinese restaurateur? Why, it's our good friend on-the-record xenophobe and Republican apologist Rob Schneider, doing a funny voice! Look how funny!

"Screw this movie." -Roger Ebert, probably.

Screw this movie.

The Animation

At first glance, you'll marvel at how good the animation in this movie is. It almost looks like a Disney "renaissance" picture, with soft colored linework, solid character models, and that colorful style. On second look, you'll begin to notice something seems amiss, but it's still good; it looks a lot like the animation and character design from 1999's "The Iron Giant." Still a good movie with decent animation, right? On the third look, it hits you: Whatever the voice actor is emoting, the characters seem dead-eyed and unreactive. Every character looks like they're using the same deadpan expression, ranging from "tired" to "extremely tired," to "oh crap, they forgot to draw on the eyelids." In short, it looks better than it has a right to be, but still isn't as good as it first appears.

You'll know what I'm talking about when you see it.

The Music

While the singing was happening (yes, this is a musical to an extent), I remember thinking, "this isn't very good." But after the movie was over, I couldn't remember a single one, except Sandler's reprisal of "The Chanukah Song" that plays over the end credits. This was common for animated films of the time: Stretch out the time of your extremely short, animated movie by adding messy and unnecessary musical numbers (see: "South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut"). If anyone complains about the lack of quality, just say "that's the joke, plebian!"

The Holiday

Look, I get that there aren't a lot of Chanukah movies out there. I get that there are other religions and faiths that are underrepresented during the Christmas season. But here's the rub: If you're going to make a movie to address this, why not make Chanukah the theme? This movie goes out of its way to mention Judaism, Chanukah, menorahs, and dreidels, and then puts all of this stuff in the background and basically ignores it for the entire movie. The most religious thing in the movie is the town's mall -- I'm not making that up. Whitey goes to the mall to clear his head. A drunk Davey breaks into the mall and is assaulted by hallucinations in the form of store logos (real stores with real product placement in this movie, by the way, although many of them have since gone out of business… RIP KB Toys…).

People "of a certain age" will recognize these brands.

Whitey in his lowest moment goes to a darkened mall and gets sympathy from the store logos. Even the whole town meets at the mall at the end to cheer Whitey. It's just… bizarre (and a little bit icky). It's so bad, in fact, that when Davey finally has his emotional epiphany it's hard for the audience (or at least me) to feel anything.

Don't watch with kids

This one's not for kids. It's clearly meant to be an adult comedy, with some swearing and very adult gross-out humor (way too much of it), which is ironic because this is exactly the sort of lowbrow tripe many kids like. You won't be having fun, but your kids would because of all the dirty stuff that isn't original or funny.

Why would you watch this? Sorry, I mean, where can you find it?

As of this writing, "Eight Crazy Nights" is streaming on Amazon Prime video for no extra cost but do yourself a favor and skip it.

The Coneheads

Thanksgiving leftovers (specifically, your xenophobic uncle's fantasies)

What's it about?

Tonight's nostalgic pic is "The Coneheads" (Rankin/Bass, 1983). The planet Remulak is the seat of a vast intergalactic empire, headed by Cauldra, the "High Master of Eight Galaxies."

Cauldra. I didn't forget to credit the actor: The actor is not credited.

In an effort to expand the empire, Cauldra assigns two of his loyal subjects, Beldar (voiced by Dan Aykroyd) and Prymaat (voiced by Jane Curtain) to travel to a new planet, Earth, and conquer it.

Aykroyd's cartoon characters are always depicted as fat, but he was quite svelte when this was made...

Along the way to the United Nations building in New York City the two get lost (mostly due to Beldar's incompetence) and crash their ship into the ocean. Escaping the crash, the two find themselves stranded on the alien world, and quickly chased by a pack of stray dogs. Making their escape they take refuge in a trailer park, hiding in a television repair shop owned by Louie Boucher (Bob McFadden).

Hm... doesn't look like Sinbad...

Louie is down on his luck, unable to repair the newer, more advanced Japanese televisions. Beldar demonstrates that he can fix them quickly and easily and is hired by Louie "under the table" to repair them, because they are in America and everyone deserves a fair deal, recalling when his grandfather immigrated there from France. The two cone-headed aliens tell Louie that they too came from France, establishing their cover in America. Forced to live among the humans while trying to build a communication device to contact Remulak, the two find themselves becoming parents, buying a home, living in the suburbs, and trying to blend in with suburban society while awaiting rescue.

Meeting the neighbors.

Some background

If you don't know, this was a failed pilot for a television show based on the popular "The Coneheads" sketch on the "Saturday Night Live" variety show of the 1970s. The core cast are all original members of the cast of SNL, including Aykroyd, Curtain, and Laraine Newman reprising her role as the daughter, Connie.

Young Connie can't cope.

It was written by Tom Davis (a famed SNL writer for DECADES) and developed for television by Davis and fellow SNL alum Al Franken (who would go on to be a United States senator for a while).

The character and production models were developed by legendary artist and illustrator Jack Davis, mostly known today as one of the main artists of classic "Mad Magazine." His influence shows, but the edges of his art are softened, and the lighting is quite a bit brighter than what he is typically known for.

If you don't know, Davis was quite old when this came out, so this is what he thought "cool" kids wore.

The animation was provided by Rankin/Bass affiliates in Japan, headed by Masaki Izuka, who seems to have worked for the Topcraft studio, although I cannot confirm whether Topcraft was the studio responsible for this, although they are direct collaborators in other Rankin/Bass classics like "The Hobbit," "The Return of the King," and "The Last Unicorn" (Masaki Izuka worked on all three). I only bring it up to remind readers that Topcraft would eventually disband and reunite under the name, "Studio Ghibli," a name that has some weight in the animation industry. Needless to say, the animation in this project is top-notch, much better than it has any right to be given the low-budget source material.

Another "fever dream" from my youth

On a personal note, I saw this when I was a kid, and I don't think that I quite knew what I was watching. Mostly I was shocked to learn that this was a short half-hour pilot, as in my mind I recall it being a longer mini movie. So long, in fact, that my eight-year-old self got bored watching it, having already seen the Coneheads on reruns of SNL.

Not good, but not bad, either

This is a weird show; not exactly terrible, but also not great. The ideas are rushed through with the end goal of setting it up for a sitcom style program (that obviously never materialized), and it seems to reprise most of the punchlines from the television show like it's checking them off a list. Unfortunately, if you're familiar with the sketches, this leaves very little left to explore.

This scene screams, "Hey everyone, remember when we did this? Eh? Eh?"

If you're completely unfamiliar with the Conehead property it might seem interesting, but I have to assume that they were banking on the sketch's popularity and the recognizability of Aykroyd, Curtain, and Newman, and this really doesn't add anything new to experience outside of the animation (which I cannot stress enough is better than it should be). Making matters worse, the producers added a really, really bad laugh track like this was filmed before a live studio audience. The absurdity of the laugh track is actually one of the funniest parts of the pilot.

It would have been funnier if the producers just had someone screaming "LAUGH TRACK! LAUGH TRACK!" in the background every time a joke is dropped.

If at first you don't succeed

Eventually, parts of this story would be adapted into a feature-length film which (thankfully) adds more jokes and situations for the characters to explore.

Safe for kids... but why bother?

There's no swearing (well, not in any earth language, anyway), but there are several adult situations, although they are explored through the lens of weird alien beings which really reduces the offensive nature to zero (this was 1980s television, after all). Oddly, if it had been picked up it would have been more "adult" than most other cartoons at the time, beating "The Simpsons" by at least five years. There is one on-screen birth, but it's obscured from the viewer and is also produced via weird alien anatomy.

Yes, they birth through their cone heads.

Honestly the most disturbing thing in the entire episode is Beldar's weird wire-trimmed porn mustache (which the character had in the original SNL episodes, but which has been scrapped in every iteration since).

Where can you see it?

You won't find this pilot commercially available anywhere, but you can usually find it on YouTube and also for free at Archive.org if you're interested:

Check it out here